OCEANIC MIGRATIONS. 



obscured by clouds, which deprive the island-voyager of his only 

 means of determining even the direction in which he is driven. 



Mr. Ellis, whose writings form the most valuable contribution to 

 the stock of knowledge which we possess concerning the South Sea 

 Islands, observes that every native voyage of which we have any 

 .account, has invariably been from east to west.* This, though it 

 expresses what is generally true, is not perfectly correct. The greater 

 number of such voyages are, no doubt, in that direction, because the 

 easterly winds blow for three-fourths of the year, and it is chiefly at 

 this season that the natives put to sea in their canoes. But not to 

 speak of instances of less importance, we have the remarkable case of 

 Kadu, a native of Ulea, in the Caroline Archipelago, who was found 

 by Kotzebue, in 1817, on the island of Aur, one of the Radack Chain, 

 to which he had been driven in a canoe with three companions, a 

 distance of nearly fifteen hundred miles due east. Beechey, in like 

 manner, found on Barrow Island, in the Paumotu Archipelago, some 

 natives of Chain Island, who had been drifted by the westerly winds 

 six hundred miles to the eastward. Though the distance is not so 

 great in this, as in the former instance, the fact is hardly less impor- 

 tant, from the circumstance that the occurrence took place near the 

 eastern limits of Polynesia. 



On our arrival at the Navigator Islands, we there first saw the 

 newly published work of the Rev. John Williams, entitled, " A Nar- 

 rative of Missionary Enterprise in the South Sea Islands." Of the 

 mass of information which it contains, I was especially struck with 

 that relating to the peopling of Rarotonga, the inhabitants of which 

 consider themselves to be descended, in part, from emigrants from 

 the Navigator Group. At another of the Hervey Islands, Aitutaki, 

 the inhabitants believe that their ancestor ascended from a region 

 beneath, termed, Avaiki.\ This account called to mind a similar 

 tradition of the Marquesans, who gave to the lower region the name 

 of Havaiki.\ It was impossible not to be reminded, at the same 

 time, of the Hatvai'i of the Sandwich Islands. All these terms are 

 the precise forms which the name of the largest of the Navigator 

 Islands (Savai'i) would assume in the different dialects. It seemed 



* Polynesian Researches (Am. edit.), vol. i. p. 108. 



f Missionary Enterprise, p. 57. 



Stewart's Voyage to the South Seas, vol. i. p. 273. 



