THE MAORI’S PLACE IN HISTORY. 265 
commerce, had been taking place; still it can be readily 
perceived they are specifically distinct. 
Throughout the scattered islands of Eastern Polynesia the 
inhabitants, when Europeans came in contact with them, 
though a mixed race, were so uniform in their arts, their 
customs, their institutions, and their language that Captain 
Cook after discovering the Hawaiian Archipelago styled 
them a nation. 
Excepting such sparsely populated regions as the 
Australian continent, Greenland, ete. there is none 
approaching in area the space of ocean occupied by the 
island groups from Samoa to Hawaii in the north and Easter 
Island in the south, wherein the people varied so little in 
their social conditions. 
Throughout these widely scattered islands the natives 
were invariably agriculturists cultivating the same 
assemblage of plants. Though unacquainted with pottery, 
with the art of weaving, and with the use of metal, as 
mariners they surpassed all other peoples of whom we have 
any knowledge, excepting perhaps the Arabs and maritime 
nations of Europe as far back as the thirteenth century. 
The cultivated plants on which the inhabitants of Eastern 
Polynesia chiefly depended for food and clothing, being 
foreign to the region, furnished the best possible means of 
determining from whence agriculture was introduced. An 
analysis shows that excepting the Kumara (Convolvulus 
batatas) a New World plant, all belonged to the flora of the 
Asiatic islands or mainland, where they have been im 
cultivation from the earliest historic period. 
Through long cultivation several of these plants had 
become seedless and could therefore only be increased by 
offsets or cuttings. Hence they not only prove from whence 
the numerous islands were populated, they clearly disprove 
the long accepted theory of accidental peopling; for it is 
impossible that plants of that description could have been 
transported to places like Easter Island and the New 
Zealand archipelago without preparation and care. 
Although the inhabitants of Eastern Polynesia were 
unacquainted with the loom and spindle, even in their rudest 
forms, they were habitually clothed, using for the purpose 
felted cloth made from the barks of the paper mulberry 
(Brussonitia papyrifera) and Hibiscus, besides hand-plaited 
fabrics of Dracene fibre and prepared dogskins. The skill 
and taste displayed in the preparation of the bark cloth and 
