GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE POLYNESIANS. 815 
This list of islands shows clearly the extent of the geographical 
knowledge of the Tahitians prior to the advent of the white man. 
From the fact stated by Forster, that Tupaea himself had visited 
most of these islands, it is clear that the Tahitians retained 
their powers of navigation much longer than some other branches 
of the Polynesian race. The New Zealanders and Sandwich 
Islanders had certainly ceased to make long voyages for some 
twenty generations ; and it is probable that the Samoans had 
done the same for many generations before the nineteenth 
century. The Tongans, Marquesans, and some others apparently 
still made extensive voyages down to the coming of the white 
man, 
Sir Joseph Banks says of the Tahitian canoes, which he fully 
describes as he saw them in ]769: ‘In these, if one may credit 
the reports of the inhabitants, they made very long voyages, often 
remaining several months from home, visiting in that time many 
different islands of which they reported to us the names of nearly 
one hundred. They cannot remain at sea above a fortnight or 
twenty days, although they live as sparingly as possible, for want 
of proper provisions and places to store them in, as well as water, 
of which they carry a tolerable stock in bamboos.” (Journal, p. 
159. 
t reference to their knowledge of astronomy, by which they 
were enabled to make these long voyages, the same writer says : 
“Tn their longer voyages they steer in the day by the sun, and in 
the night by the stars ; of these they know a very large number 
by name, and the cleverest among them will tell in what part of 
the heavens they are to be seen in any month when they are 
above the horizon; they know also the time of their annual 
appearance and disappearance to a great nicety—far greater than 
would be easily believed by an European astronomer.” (Loc. cit., 
p. 162.) 
Captain Cook notes that the Tahitians gave him the names of 
130 islands known to them. 
In addition to the names mentioned on Tupaea’s chart, and in 
the old Tahitian chants already quoted, M. De Bovis, a writer on 
Tahitian subjects, gives the names of the following lands to the 
west of Tahiti mentioned in their chants :—Te Miromiro, Pua-ura, 
Faa-nui, and Tonga-tapu, the latter no doubt being the principal 
island of the Tonga Group, and which is not alluded to in Tupaea’s 
chart. Then we have the list of names embodied in ‘The Birth 
of new Lands,” a chant published by Miss Henry in the ‘ Journal 
of the Polynesian Society,” vol. 11, p. 136, wherein are included 
the names of a number of islands situated between Tahiti and 
Hawaii which no longer exist. This tradition was also given by 
Fornander in his ‘‘ The Polynesians,” from the Hawaiian point of 
view. 
