96 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



have made voyages of man}' hundî-eds of miles. But, from a remote 

 period, centuries before it was known to Europeans, the Malays, in their 

 large prahns, visited the fishing grounds oft' the northern shores of 

 Australia. As for the size of their vessels, it is related that a chief of the 

 Tonga islands visited Fiji, three hundred and sixty miles away, in three 

 canoes, which together contained two hundred and fifty people with pro- 

 visions for the voyage. In the time of early Portuguese colonization in 

 the east, the kingdom of Acheen, in Sumatra, sent against them a fleet of 

 ninety vessels, some of them of four hundred tons burden, and carrying 

 seven thousand men and much artillery. The Haidahs appear to have 

 kept up their love of large canoes. The dug-out which carried Mr, Poole 

 from the Queen Charlotte islands to the mainland had three jury-masts 

 and a main stay-sail, and carried thirty-seven people with two tons of 

 freight. From whatever point the ancestors of the Haidahs set out on 

 the voyage that landed them in their American home, that voyage 

 must have been a long and distressing one, yet not an impossibility to 

 people inured to a rough life on the sea. 



It has been objected that the prevalence of northeast and southeast 

 trade winds in the tropics is an argument against long voyages towards 

 the western coast of America, but Dr. Lang, in his " View of the Poly- 

 nesian Nation," has successfully controverted this opinion by giving many 

 testimonies to the fact that, within a few degrees north and south of the 

 line, westerly winds are as frequent. He also accounts for distant coloni- 

 sation on the part of the South Sea islanders by the custom of conquerors 

 to compel the vanquished survivors to put to sea in their canoes, and not 

 return on pain of death, Such forced migrations have been the means of 

 settling the coasts of America from Japan and other points in Northern 

 Asia, as well as from the islands of the Pacific. The Haidahs, as a sub- 

 ordinate Melanesian people, probabl}' found in rebellion against their 

 Malay masters in some part of the archipelago, were, at some remote 

 •period, offered their choice between death and expatriation, and, spurned 

 from every intermediate landing-place, at last found refuge on the unin- 

 habited islands of the far east. This may have taken place at any time 

 between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the latter period the 

 power of the Melanesian must have been broken and his race reduced to 

 degradation. 



That the Haidahs represent a coniparativeh' recent immigration to 

 the American coast seems evident from their western location. All other 

 American tribes of oceanic derivation are found in the east. Such are 

 the Mbaya-Abipones, the Tupi-truaranis, the Caribs, the Mayas of Yuca- 

 tan, and the Algonquins. All of these landed originally on the west 

 coast, whence the}' were driven eastward by invading tribes from Japan 

 and the Asiatic mainland north, which displaced them through superior 

 valour. These invasions appear to have begun early in the eighth cen- 



