TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 289 



plant may have been carried by the Polyuesians to America. 

 The fact that some of the native races of Peru call the plant 

 by the name umar, which is very like humara, or, as it is 

 called in some of the islands, uinara, is either an extraordi- 

 nary coincidence or indication of a common source from 

 whence the name was derived.* In the Rev. R. Taylor's 

 " Ika-a-mtiui," he relates the following tradition, whicli he 

 learned from an old Maori of the Rarawa : "In a neighbour- 

 ing island from whence they [the Rarawa Tribe] came were 

 beasts which carried men on their backs ; and in some of the 

 islands were axes having holes in them, through which the 

 handles were thrust ; and in one island, men who wore no 

 clothing and were perfectly black ; in another, men with 

 sandy hair, who had nuts with oil in them." Mr. Taylor is 

 not always quite safe to quote — at any rate, as to the deduc- 

 tions he draws ; but we possibly have here a confused tradi- 

 tion of the llama of South America, besides a reference 

 to the Melanesians with black skins, and to the cocoanut 

 of Polynesia. Sufficient proof, however, is yet wanting 

 to decide the question as to whether the Polynesians ever 

 reached America. Long as the voyage of four thousand 

 miles may seem, and against the trade-winds too, that per- 

 formed by TukuiJio and the people of Rapa Island when they 

 sailed in the same direction from their island home twenty- 

 four generations ago, and discovered Bapa-nui, or Easter 

 Island, does not fall so very far short of it, the distance being 

 About 2,520 miles, without any intervening resting-places. 



The well-authenticated voyages between the Sandwich 

 Islands and Tahiti, a distance of 2,380 miles, as related by 

 Fornander, show also the extent to which this people were 

 masters of the sea. In this latter case, however, there are a 

 few little islands on the route, which the voyagers would no 

 doubt know of — a fact which is proved by finding remains of 

 native occupancy in the shape of stone axes, graves, and other 

 things. 



Again, to the north of the Paumotu archipelago lies the 

 Marquesas group, which was discovered and settled early in 



• Quatrefages, in his " Les Homines Fossiles et les Homme.s Sau- 

 vages," page 411, in writing of the plants in common use in Polynesia,, 

 says, " The kwnara has heen regarded at different times as originating in 

 Asia or in America, but not a botanist has assigned Polynesia for its birth- 

 place ; and De Candollo is inclined to think that it is indigenous to both 

 continents. At the same time he admits tluxt it has been described in a 

 Chinese work of the second or third century. It was therefore known in 

 China before the Buddhist missions, which have taken the Asiatics to 

 America, and of which the reality, a long timo discussed, seems to me to 

 have been placed beyond doubt at the present day. (See ' Fusang, or the 

 Discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist Priests in the Fifth Century.' 

 By Ch. Leiaud.)" 



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