122 



ETHNOGRAPHY. 



which led him to derive the Society Islanders from the northern 

 group, would have induced him to refer both the Hawaiis to that 

 source. 



Cook, in the history of his first voyage (vol. iii., p. 69), comparing 

 the New Zealanders with the South Sea (i. e. Society) islanders, 

 observes that " they have both a tradition that their ancestors, at a 

 very remote period of time, came from another country; and, accord- 

 ing to the tradition of both, the name of that country is Heawije." 

 There is no j in either the New Zealand or Tahitian language. It 

 may be a mistake, made in printing or copying, for g, the hard sound 

 of which is frequently given by the Polynesians to their k ; in this 

 case Hearvige would be the English orthography for the New Zealand 

 word Hawaiki.* 



But the most important testimony is that furnished by a chart 

 drawn by Tupaia (or Tupaya], the native who accompanied Captain 

 Cook in his first voyage, and published by J. R. Forster, in his " Ob- 

 servations made during a Voyage round the World." It contains the 

 names of all the islands known to Tupaia, either from having visited 

 them, or by tradition. The extent of information displayed in it is 

 surprising. We find every important group of Polynesia, except the 

 Sandwich Islands and New Zealand, laid down, though not accu- 

 rately, yet with a certain attention to bearings and distances, which 

 enables us to identify them. What gives its chief value to the chart, 

 is the fact that, at the time it was drawn, more than half the islands 

 which it contains were unknown to Europeans, and of those which 

 had been discovered the native names of very few were ascer- 

 tained. Much confusion has been made in the chart by a mistake of 

 those for whom Tupaia drew it. Knowing that toerau in Tahitian 

 signified the north (or northwest) wind, and toa the south, they con- 

 cluded naturally that apatoerau and apatoa were names applied to the 

 corresponding points of the compass; whereas apatoerau signifies, in 

 fact, the point towards which the north wind blows, i. e. the south, 

 and apatoa, for the same reason, the north. By not understanding 

 this, they have, so far as these two points are concerned, reversed the 



* The h, at the beginning of a word, in the dialects of New Zealand and Tahiti, when 

 it takes the place of the Samoan s, has a peculiar hissing sound, which some have repre- 

 sented by sh, others by eh, others by he, or /*', or simply e. Thus the word Jwngi, from 

 the Samoan songi, meaning to salute by pressing noses, has been spelled by different 

 writers, shongi, ehongi, heongi, Kongi, and eongi. This is evidently the origin of the 

 He in the word Heawije. 



