16 THE POLYNESIAN WANDERINGS. 



the sense of the migration theory simultaneously with Nuguria. This can 

 be understood only on the theory that a part of the fleet, at least on this 

 stretch, was set somewhere about two degrees westward. 



Are we then to assume that a people endowed with the energy to enter 

 upon a voyage into the unknown were not in condition to set foot on one 

 of the great Melanesian islands? Did they find the whole island thickly 

 set with towns which beat them back? Had the weeks since they had 

 forsaken the homeland caused them to avoid a conflict which would have 

 put them into possession of a fertile island in order that on the other hand 

 they might follow with marvellous instinct a chain of islets which would 

 lead them next to Ticopia, after which they must sail a long voyage on 

 the open ocean? And all this against the trades! Furthermore we are 

 confident that the wanderers carried with them useful animals and plants. 

 Probably they landed some of these upon our islands. What has become 

 of them? Tradition and history know them as introduced by settlers or 

 altogether the gift of the white men. Have those originally introduced 

 perished, have they run out? 



The more we try to establish details of the voyage in regard of local 

 conditions and the present character of the Polynesians, so much the more 

 improbable becomes the thought that strikes us at first glance that our 

 atolls were the halting-places of the early Polynesians. 



Readily enough the possibility is suggested in accordance with which 

 the wanderers journeyed in close accord with the theory, used the islands 

 as stopping-places, etc. But among the multitude of possibilities that 

 suggest themselves the exact coincidence would mark this as an astounding 

 accident. For not only during the voyage along the Melanesian islands 

 must an unusually great series of accidents have been actively at work, but 

 in the same measure the same must have been true from the outset of the 

 journey. 



The early Polynesian left the Malayan tract, as is properly to be assumed, 

 by way of the Celebes Sea and Straits of Molucca and then encountered 

 current and wind conditions varying from season to season. From Novem- 

 ber to March northwest and north winds blow with interruptions and a 

 current sets toward the southeast. In the latter case the Polynesians 

 might actually reach our islands. But that implies the beginning of the 

 voyage in the bad season. If one takes into consideration the remarkable 

 sensitiveness of the Oceanic peoples to rain, almost laughable in our sight, 

 he will scarcely admit the conclusion that the Polynesians intentionally 

 set forth in the stormy season of the rains. To this is to be added the fact 

 that the seasonal change of wind and current which holds in the Pacific 

 was unknown to them, for they are assumed to be coming out of regions in 

 which this change does not exist in anything like the same fashion. 



Consequently there is much in support of the argument that the early 

 Polynesians left the Malay Archipelago during the good season, that is to 

 say while the southeast trades held in the eastern regions. They came 

 then immediately into the equatorial countercurrent, which, moreover, 

 flows in the northwest season, although with diminished strength ; or they 

 were forced into it by the south equatorial current. This area is also the 

 region of calms and variables. They were thus especially directed toward 

 the current upon which they were necessarily borne. The importance of 

 these equatorial currents, which attain a considerable velocity, is known 

 through the Spanish attempts to reach the Palaus and from the history 

 of boats drifted off from the Carolines. From the Palaus the boats always 

 drift to Samar or the southern Philippines (north equatorial current) ; on 



