CHAPTER XIX 



THE POLYNESIANS AND THEIR MIGRATIONS 



The origin of the various races of the islands of the 

 Pacific has always been one of the most difficult problems 

 for the believers in the unity and the recent origin of 

 man. Their diversity of physical features, of civilization, 

 and of language, the absence of any continental races to 

 which they could be affiliated, and the wide spaces of 

 ocean over which they are distributed, have hitherto 

 seemed to indicate that their origin dates from a period so 

 remote that we cannot hope to determine it with any 

 approach to certainty. 



M. Quatrefages,^ however, evidently believes he has com- 

 pletely solved this difficult problem, as far as regards the 

 most important of the Pacific races, the Polynesians. 

 He very properly limits this term to the brown races spread 

 over a wide area from the Sandwich Islands in the 

 north to New Zealand on the south, and from Easter 

 Island on the east to the Tonga and Samoan groups on 

 the west ; but all speaking dialects of one well-marked 

 language. Now what M. Quatrefages attempts to prove 

 is, that these people are simply Malays, who migrated 

 from some islands of the Malayan Archipelago (probably 

 Bouru in the Moluccas), and have more or less inter- 

 mingled Avith the races of Melanesia and Micronesia. His 

 evidence to prove this is of two kinds : — first, he en- 



^ Le-s Polyneden-s et lenrs Mi(jrations^ par M. de Quatrefages, Menibre 

 de rinstitut, Professeur an Museum. Faiis, pp. 199, Arthur 

 Bertrand, Editeur, 21, Rue Hautefeuille, 



