Source and Migration of flic Polynesian Race. 225 



and its other descendants, or that they were living- at the time of separation in a country 

 where those animals were unknown. 



History is almost equally mute as to the place where this separation took place. 

 Some faint traces alone remain, in the names of headlands and islands, of the routes bv 

 which they entered the Pacific, and some of the Polynesian traditions point to a land 

 in the northwest, called "Pulo-to" as their fatherland and whither their spirits returned 

 after death. Mr. Dominis de Rienzi, in his Oceanic. atTords many plausible reasons 

 for assuming- that Borneo is the father-land and starting point of the Polynesian family, 

 and that it springs from the Daya or Dyak root. If so, the separation took place before 

 the Daya language took on the consonantal endings to so many of its words. 



How the separation took place there can be little doubt about. Wars and famine 

 have in the past as in the present even impelled mankind to seek in distant climes that 

 security and abundance which were denied them at home. 



Assuming therefore — and there are but small grounds for doubting the correct- 

 ness of the general proposition — that the ancestors of the Polynesian family were 

 driven out from their original home in th.- Asiatic Archipelago by their cousins ger- 

 man or, rather, nephews, the present Malay tribes, properly so called, there were two 

 passages by which they might escape into the unknown (if they were unknown) wastes 

 of the Pacific : either by the Gilolo Passage or by Torres Straits. I am inclined to 

 believe that the greater stream came by Torres Straits, though others might have come 

 and undoubtedly did come by the Gilolo Passage, and that they dwelt some time on the 

 Loyalt}- Islands before they were driven further on by the Papuan race which now 

 occupies them. My reason for so thinking is that the names of these islands and some 

 of their prominent headlands, even in the mouth of its present inhabitants, are purely 

 Polynesian names, and thus indicate the iM-olonged if not i)revious presence of the race 

 that named them. From the Loyalty isles they undoubtedly touched at and occupied 

 portions of the \'iti Archipelago, which have ever since remained a debatable ground 

 between the Papuan and the Polynesian races. Hence to the Samoan group in the 

 northeast, and to the Tonga group in the southeast, the transition was easy ; and these I be- 

 lieve to have been the first permanent habitats of the Polynesian family in the Pacific. 

 Whether these two groujis were settled sinmltaneously or successively, or the one from 

 the other, would recjuire more special knowledge of their respective traditions, legends, 

 songs and language to decide, than I possess. And from one or the other of these 

 groups the other Polynesian islands have been peopled surely. I am inclined to believe, 

 however, that the Samoan, or Navigator's Islands were the first permanent footholds 

 which the Polynesians obtained in the Pacific. My reason for so thinking is this : In the 

 Daya dialects — among the Battas, Idaans, Buguis, and Soulas, or rather Houlas, the .s- is 

 a component part of the language. The only Polynesian dialect which has preserved the 

 .v in the same words and in the same places of a word is the Samoan. All other dialects 

 have substituted an aspirate for the sibilant, — /;, k, or t. In the same manner the ng is a 

 consonant sound in the Daya, Bugui and Batta dialects. It is the same in the Samoan; 

 and although still retained in the Tonga, Hervey and New Zealand groups, it is but sparse- 

 ly used and decreasing in frequency in the Tahiti, Paumotu and Marquesan groups, and 

 disused entirely in the Hawaiian group; p and k being its general substitutes. 



