450 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



of some of the letters, and the substitution of others. But they are all dialects 

 of the same language. A native of New Zealand, of the Fejee, the Navigators, 

 the Tahitian, or the Marquesas Islands can, in a few days, interchange thoughts 

 as freely with Hawaiians as if he were among his own people. I mentioned, 

 in a note, an Indian girl from Chili, who lived in my family a few years ago. 

 She had the perfect contour of features which mark the Hawaiian women, and 

 the same copper color, but a shade lighter. After being here a few months 

 she spoke with the same fluency and intonation of voice as if she had been born 

 here. Yet she was ignorant of the grammar of language, and of letters. She 

 told me her native tongue was a little like the Hawaiian, but cpuld give me no 

 further information. The words in many cases may differ, but, as the structure of 

 sentences is the same in both cases, it is easy, as in her case, to quickly get hold of 

 the tongue. 



" When I visited the Marquesas, two years ago, I found the people essentially 

 Hawaiian. In a week after landing I could talk with them on any common sub- 

 ject. I found they held traditions that their ancestors came originally from Hawaii, 

 and the name of the first ancestor of their race was Mawi of Hawaii, which is the 

 same traditional name the Hawaiians boast of as their first ancestor. 



" But the question, how the Polynesian race became so widely scattered, I fear 

 will never be fully solved. In coming from Southern Asia they must have s'ailed 

 to the windward all the way. The only manner in which I can solve it is to sup- 

 pose that the ancient Southern Asiatics were civilized, and sailed in ships rather 

 than in canoes ; and that they had a sufficient knowledge of navigation to traverse 

 a pathless ocean to windward. If so, they have long lost it. They have no tradi- 

 tions of their Asiatic origin. But there are intimations of the original Hawaiians 

 having come here direct from the Navigators' Islands. The name of the principal 

 island of that group corresponds to the name of our principal island. Svaii there. 

 Hawaii here. The v and w are interchangeable letters in all Polynesia ; s and Ji 

 are exchangeable, although there is no s in Hawaiian." 



The Malayan family possess an original and distinctive system of relationship ; a 

 system not less clearly limited and defined than the highest form of the Turanian. 

 Its importance is much enhanced by the relation in which it stands to the 

 Ganowanian and Turanian forms, although separated from them by a wide interval. 

 It is an older, and so far as the tables show, the first stage of the classificatory 

 system. Whatever form may have existed antecedent to the Malayan, the latter 

 is probably the oldest form of consanguinity and affinity now existing upon the 

 earth. In the natural order of the subject it should have been first presented ; but 

 as the question of the probable origin of the system, and the relation of its several 

 forms, does not arise until after a knowledge of these forms has been obtained, it 

 has been reserved for the last place. 



In the table will be found the system of relationship of the Hawaiians, and 

 New Zealanders of Polynesia, and also of the Kusaiens and Kingsmill islanders of 

 Micronesia. For a family of nations so numerous and so widely scattered geogra- 

 phically as the Malayan, this number of schedules furnish a narrow basis for a final 

 induction determinative of the system of this family. The Hawaiian form herein 



