] ;JO ETHNOGRAPHY. 



and Tonga, similar instances of the changes in meaning, from a 

 limited and relative, to a general and absolute sense, which proper 

 names undergo at the second remove. In this manner, it seems pro- 

 bable that the meaning given in Hawaiian to the word Tahiti, may 

 have arisen. The Marquesans have been shown to be derived, in 

 part, at least, from the island of that name, and they have always 

 retained a knowledge of its existence. If, before they had been very 

 long settled in the Marquesan Group, they sent forth a colony to the 

 Sandwich Islands, the members of this colony would, at starting, 

 have the knowledge or tradition of no less than three different places 

 which they might term the mother-country, namely, Savaii (or 

 Havaiki), Tahiti, and Nukuhiva. We may suppose that, in process 

 of time, the first and most distant was wholly forgotten ; the second, 

 only retained as a general name for foreign country, and the third, 

 remembered more distinctly, though not perhaps as the source from 

 whence they were derived. 



That when the first settlers reached the Sandwich Islands, they 

 retained a knowledge of the original seat of their race in the Navi- 

 gator Group, seems almost certain, from the fact that they gave to 

 the largest island of their new country the name of the largest of the 

 Samoan Islands, to which it bears, in shape and general appearance, 

 a striking resemblance. Moreover, to the north point of this island 

 they gave the name of Upolu, the second island of the Samoan Group, 

 and a small rocky islet near Niihau was called Lehua, being that form 

 which Lefuka, the name of one of the islands in the Friendly Group, 

 would take in the Hawaiian language. 



These names may serve as a clue to the manner in which the 

 migration to this group took place. It is, prima facie, evident, that 

 this could hardly have been by a canoe driven off to the northward, 

 as it was crossing from one of the Marquesas Islands to another. 

 The distance is nearly two thousand miles, and a canoe would not 

 accomplish it in less than twenty days, with a constantly fair wind ; 

 but a southerly wind, for that length of time, is, in that region, some- 

 thing unexampled. On this supposition, moreover, they would, of 

 course, be without provisions sufficient for such a voyage; and, in 

 that case, it is inconceivable that dogs and pigs should have been 

 kept alive till their arrival. Yet their traditions distinctly state that 

 these animals have been on the islands since they were first inhabited. 

 This is confirmed by the fact that they are of that peculiar breed 

 proper to the South Sea Islands. But if we suppose that a party of 



