The Oceanic Languages Shemitic : a Discovery. 271 



and West in the ancient world. It was from there that the 

 Phoenicians, and Hebrews (in the person of Abraham), 

 emigrated to the West. The Chaldean ships sailed the 

 Oceanian seas, just as did the Phoenician the Mediterranean ; 

 and as the Phoenicians planted colonies on the Mediterranean 

 shores, so, but with more lasting effects, did the Euphrateans 

 in the multitude of the isles. Not only did they establish 

 secondary commercial states in Southern Arabia and 

 Abyssinia, but they sowed men in Madagascar and Malaysia. 

 The negro element among the Shemitic-speaking Oceanians 

 can be accounted for best in this way. They were in the 

 homes and ships of the ancient Shemites as slaves, and learned 

 their language just as the American negro slaves learned 

 English. There are no negroes in Asia. Ancient history is 

 not altogether silent, but seems to stand with uplifted 

 hand and parted lips, and just stops short of uttering the 

 whole secret. Herodotus gives a celebrated account of a 

 voyage round Africa undertaken by Phoenicians for 

 Pharaoh-Necho, king of Egypt; and it is not to be 

 supposed that the circumnavigators of Africa were ignorant 

 of Madagascar. Isaiah mentions China by name. I have 

 only further to mention the magic word Ophir, to which 

 Solomon's fleet went on three years' voyages, and which 

 Josephus declares to be Malacca. These, the first ocean 

 voyages recorded by history, were performed in Oceania and 

 by Shemites, whose ships, according to so sober an authority 

 as Chambers' Encyclopaedia, may have gone as far even as 

 the Spice Islands, near New Guinea. Finally, the fact that 

 Madagascar and Easter Island, or Efate, are peopled by the 

 same race cannot be accounted for so well on any other 

 hypothesis ; and, if their language is Shemitic, as I think I 

 have proved, can be accounted for on no other hypothesis 

 whatever. 



In solving the problem of the origin of the Oceanians 

 there are four groups of facts, or possible facts, to be con- 

 sidered and compared ; and the consensus of these, so far as 

 they are obtainable, gives the highest certainty possible. 

 These are the philological, ethnological, geographical, and 

 historical. It may be said that, strictly speaking, there are 

 only two theories possible, that Oceania has been peopled 

 from South-Eastern Asia, or, as I maintain, from South- 

 western Asia, or the Persian Gulf. You may assert the 

 former of these, but philology is totally against it. History, 



