184 THE POLYNESIAN WANDERINGS. 



Myself, I have fancied that from the inner content of many of the 

 elemental words of the language I might reconstruct a vision of the 

 geophysics of the earliest home, ancestral Hawaiki in the great sea 

 of Kiwa. It was a pleasant speculation ; almost I could see the old 

 home. In casting about for a terrain which would in some sort 

 correspond to this artificial cloudcuckooland I was led to pitch upon 

 the Hadramaut, close to Dr. Macdonald's seat of origin. I have 

 found pleasure, better yet it has been given me to find enduring 

 profit in great joy, sweeping concentric circles of study upon the 

 languages that ring about the Hadramaut in Arabia and across the 

 straits in Africa. Yet nowhere have I found so much as a single 

 word upon which I might rely in confirmation. 



Fornander, with much labor, has sought to find the origin of the 

 Polynesians in the origin of our own speech family. It has not 

 seemed to any Polynesian student necessary to enter upon a detailed 

 disproof of his argument ; every item sufficiently disproves itself by 

 the discovery of his complete lack of philological training and the 

 language instinct. 



The school of students of Polynesian origins, that unanswered 

 "whence of the Maori," which has grown into enthusiastic existence 

 in New Zealand, has been sedulous in this study, at times almost 

 inspired. At present they are in general accord in regarding the 

 Polynesian ancestral home as somewhere in the Indian peninsula, 

 either in its great valleys of the Ganges and the Panjab, or else upon 

 the heights rising farther to the north. The best statement of this 

 opinion is most lucidly and most compellingly set forth in Percy 

 Smith's "Hawaiki." 



I wish that I might take my stand with that rich scholarship which 

 has proved such an inspiration to me in my work. In following out 

 the only method which I feel sure in handling I can not go farther 

 than the material in my hand will lead me. At Java, or thereabout, 

 the last thread slips past. Up to that point I have followed the 

 leading toward Pulotu whither the dead go, toward Hawaiki whence 

 the living come, always westward with the words to go with me 

 from land to land — now at last the tale of the words is done. 



I may go no farther. In Java I halt, and Java may be in itself 

 a Hawaiki. There is no further leading. Out yonder beyond my 

 sight, out yonder over the unended sea and the sun going down, out 

 and away whither my eyes tire with the strain of unavailing seeing, 

 somewhere lies the Hawaiki of our vain search. There I would that 

 I might see the canoes setting bravely forth with the rhythm of song 

 and the pulse of paddles, bravely out on the great sea of Kiwa, their 

 crews the forebears of that race of men who beyond all others made 

 the sea their own, even to its uttermost islands. 



