534 Transactio7is. — Miscellaneous. 



the dust and dirt of centuries ; but they may be as truly reHcs 

 of the past — message- bearing reHcs — as the fragment of clay 

 cylinder or the stoue arrow-head. 



It is probably a general, and it is certainly a convenient, 

 way of observing the customs, language, &c., of an uncivilised 

 people to regard them as being the possessions of a primitive 

 people ; to look upon the wild strangers not only as savages, 

 but as being the descendants of savages. On the Asiatic and 

 African Continents such conclusions have been in some cases 

 counterchecked by that which ancient history has told us, 

 but, in regard to races of which little is known, the common 

 method of regarding them is as barbarians, root and branch. 

 This easy way of dismissing the subject is the method of the 

 child with the fragments of ancient pottery, not caring for the 

 maker because unconscious that centuries ago such a person 

 existed ; but for those who possess the spirit of inquiry and 

 who will take the trouble rewards of discovery are surely 

 waiting. If I assert that the language, customs, and tradi- 

 tions of the Polynesian Maoris have internal and almost 

 unmistakable evidence that the forefathers of these Maoris 

 once knew a higher culture than they possessed at the time of 

 their discovery by Cook, I touch upon a field of inquiry which 

 can be searched in many different directions, and which 

 invites many workers, whose varieties of disposition and 

 attainment will assist each other. 



It would take up far too much space for a paper of this 

 kind if I should descant on the examples of decadence which 

 history presents to us. We have seen that sovereign cities 

 like Nineveh, Babylon, Carthage, Tyre, Palmyra, and Thebes 

 can pass away utterly from the active life of the world ; while 

 others, like Athens, Eome, Byzantium, and Alexandria, have 

 been peopled by men little fitted to represent the fame of 

 earth's dead masters. To-day we may pass among the Arabs 

 as among the South Sea Islanders,''' and, asking the names of 

 the builders of what are now gigantic ruins, be answered, 

 " These were built by the gods, or by the evil spirits, in old 

 time." We even find that in Malacca the descendants of the 

 Portuguese conquerors have fallen lower than the wild tribes 

 around them, and have become bookless, letterless, nameless, 

 immoral savages. How this decadence is wrought is not 

 always easy to trace — probably in no two cases are the causes 

 precisely the same ; but the result is the same — forgetfulness 

 and intellectual paralysis. 



If we narrow down the inquiry to the case of the Poly- 

 nesian Islanders, and admit for a moment, as a hypothesis, 

 that it is possible that they once knew a higher civilisation, it 



In the New Hebrides, Ponape, &c. 



