460 Transactions. 



nui, equivalent to our December. An old native of the Nga Rauru Tribe 

 stated that Wlianga-rei and Wlianga-te-au were starting-places for canoes 

 leaving New Zealand for Rarotonga. 



Missionary Williams, the man of many voyages in Polynesia, remarks 

 that westerly winds occur about every two months. He sailed from 

 Rurutu to Tahiti, three hundred and fifty miles north-north-east, in fortv- 

 eight hours. On another occasion, from a point two hundred miles west 

 of Niue, he sailed, with a fair wind, seventeen hundred miles to the east- 

 ward in fifteen days. In October, 1832, during a voyage from Rarotonga 

 to Samoa, he sailed eight hundred miles in five days without once shifting 

 a sail. 



The trade-winds that pass northward of New Zealand would carry 

 Tongan raiders to the New Hebrides, Loyalty Isles, and New Caledonia. 

 In 1793 the expedition in search of La Perouse saw a canoe on the coast 

 of New Caledonia containing eight PoljTiesians — seven men and one 

 woman — who spoke the Tongan dialect. They had come from Uvea, in 

 the Loyalty Group, a day's sail distant. Pritchard, in his " Polvnesian 

 Reminiscences," mentions that, in his time, there were living at this L^-ea, 

 or Uea, the grandchildren of Tongan castaways who had, in a double 

 canoe, drifted over eleven hundred miles to that isle. 



In 1696 two canoes, containing thirty persons of both sexes, drifted 

 nine hundred miles to the Philippines. In 1721 two canoes reached Guam, 

 in the Ladrones, after a twenty-day drift. In 1817 Kotzebue found on 

 one of the Radack Chain a native of the Carolines, one of a partv that 

 had made a fifteen-hundred-mile drift due east. Cook, when on his third 

 voyage, found at i\.tiu some castaways from Tahiti, driven thither when 

 trying to make Raiatea. Of this incident Cook remarked, " It will serve 

 to explain, better than a thousand conjectures . . . how the islands 

 of the South Seas may have been first peopled." 



Kotzebue tells us of finding a Japanese vessel off the Californian 

 coast in 1815 that had drifted for seventeen months across the Pacific. 

 Only three of her crew of thirty-five were alive. Dillon speaks of a drift 

 voyage of 465 miles made by four Rotuma men who were cast away on 

 Tikopia, a small island north of the New Hebrides. As this island is 

 peopled by Polpiesians speaking a dialect closely resembling that of New 

 Zealand, it was probably settled by drift voyagers from the east. The 

 above drift occurred about the year 1800. Dillon states that other drift 

 canoes from Rotuma have reached Tikopia, Fiji, and Samoa. 



In 1832 Williams found at Manua, Samoa, a native of Tubuai, in the 

 Austral Group, south of Tahiti. He was one of a party sailing from 

 Tubuai to an adjacent isle. Their canoe, storm-caught, drifted for three 

 months ere it reached Manua, when most of the crew had perished. In 

 such cases the catching of rain-water, and of fish, usually sharks, preserved 

 life in some of the waifs. Coconuts, usually carried in canoes, would 

 presumably furnish some extra water-vessels. 



Another recorded drift is that of some natives of Aitutaki, who thus 

 reached Proby's Island, a thousand miles to the westward. Beechey found 

 some natives of Anaa or Chain Island, at Bow Island, Paumotu Group. 

 Three canoes had drifted six hundred miles eastward ; two had been lost, 

 while those in the third, owing to a series of accidents and bad luck, had 

 been for three years trying to get home by working from island to island. 



On the 8th March, 1821, a canoe reached Raiatea from Rurutu, Austral 

 Isles, after being buffeted about, the ocean for six weeks. 



