230 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



in peace and fierceness in war, the status and freedom of their 

 women, the position and authority of their chiefs, the existence 

 of a court language, their dexterity and daring in navigation and 

 deep sea fishing, and their skill in tatooing and in manufacturing 

 bark cloth or paper. In all of which features they are opposed 

 to the Melanesians. To institute closer comparisons between the 

 language, manners, customs and implements of the two races is an 

 inviting task, which opportunity does not permit me to pursue, 

 but I would submit it as a problem worth investigation, whether 

 the Polynesians may not stand in the same relation of distant and 

 degenerate kin to the Japanese as the Australian Blacks are 

 known to hold towards the Indian Dravidians. 



Since the above idea occurred to me I have perused with pleasure 

 and profit an article by Mr. A. H. Keane, " On the Relations of 

 the Indo-Chinese and Inter-Oceanic Races and Languages,"* This 

 writer points out that " for science, there is no organic Malay 

 type, Malay being a national not a racial designation." Other 

 writersf have shown that the Japanese of to-day is likewise a 

 fusion of several distinct stocks. Keane's view that the Poly- 

 nesian of the Pacific represents an ancestral type now obliterated 

 almost or altogether as a pure race in South East Asia, but still 

 there discernable as a component element in existing people, has 

 much to recommend it. 



The route of the Polynesian from South East Asia to his present 

 abode is generally heldj to have been through Papua, south-east- 

 wards through the larger islands of the western Pacific, by Fiji to 

 Samoa, thence to Rarotonga and finally to Hawaii. Against this 

 it seems to me an insuperable objection that the Samoans and 

 Eastern Polynesians were without any Papuan strain physically, 

 and had acquired none of the Papuan manners and customs, such 

 as the art of pottery, which a transit through Papuan lands could 

 not fail to impress upon them. Besides, at the point of contact 

 between the two races, we now see a contrary wave of Polynesian 

 blood and influence actually in motion from east to west. In the 

 Fijian Archipelago there is a gradual transition from a preponder- 

 ance of Polynesian in the east to a preponderance of Melanesian 

 in the west. Less marked but perceptible is the change in the 

 New Hebrides, and in the Solomons it can again be faintly seen, 

 while New Caledonia furthest west appears purest Melanesian. 

 Even in the east of New Guinea, Polynesian influence is traceable 

 though here once more it declines westward. That such authorities 

 as Wyatt Gill and Percy Smith should derive the Maories from 

 an eastern source the Hervey and Society Groups accords better 

 with the following hypothesis than with the accepted theory. Ellis 



* Journ. Anthrop. lust., ix., 1880, p. 254. 



f Griffis The Mikado's Empire, 1887, p. 27. 



I Rankin Journ. Antbrop. Inst, vi., 1877, p. 233. 



