Bansrow.—Stray Thoughts on Mahori and Maori Migrations. 235 
or, as we have seen, canoes getting to the south would find westerly breezes, 
and might, having run down their westing, haul up to the northward. The 
* Bounty's" crew went from Tahiti to Pitcairn. But there are hundreds 
of inhabited islands in the South Seas, and though it would be idle to 
suppose that all these were peopled by direct immigration from an original 
source, small parties, no doubt, leaving one island and occupying a neigh- 
bouring one. Yet the distinet groups or isolated islands, each requiring an 
independent colonization, are many, and it seems hard to admit that all 
these streams of immigrants came either from one small source, like the 
_ Navigators, or invariably against wind and current. Had there been in 
the latitude of the Paumotu group, an island as large as the one on which 
we are, to serve as a depot on which an immigration from Samoa having 
once landed and then multiplied re-emigrated, and thus spread over all the 
intervening isles, the whole difficulty would vanish. But as a fact the 
islands most to the eastward are small, with the exception of the Mar- 
quesas, very small. Nukuhiva, the largest of the Marquesas group, is only 
eighteen miles long by ten broad, and most of the islands of the vast 
Paumotu and adjacent Archipelago, owing to want of food and water, 
cannot support a dense population. 
To understand the subjeet properly it is necessary to consider the size 
of the various groups, their present population, and its amount in earlier 
times. Probably an estimate of-one million would not be excessive for the 
total of the race a century ago, though now dwindled down to about the 
third of that number. We find then the following groups :— 
Name. kn ae Population. 
New Zealand .. "m sx "s ks 100,000 s 30,000* 
Friendly or Tongan Islands a i is is as {islands 100 25,000 
moan or Navigator Islands jc m s AA 1,750 56,000 
Cook’s Islands.. Ws ea gi a ne ee x 5,000 
Austral Islands 400 
Society Island 5874 21,000 
motu Islands 10,000 
Marquesas Islands 20,000 
Ellice Islands . 700 
Gilbert lslands 60,000 
Phenix Islands a "ES NA zen ve ws Es xc 
Sandwich Islands — .. ve a 2. is 2: 6,000 56,897 
Marshall Islands ss AG ae a am A Re 
These populations, however, are the mere relics of former multitudes. 
Captain Cook, a most accurate observer, estimated the number of the 
people in this country at 200,000, and that was a century ago. The mis- 
sionary bodies compiled a return in 1840, and gave 120,000 as the census 
* According to official census, 1874, the Maori population was 45,470.—Eb, 
