﻿46 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



by the native emigrants was most probably more circuitous, and as far easterly 

 as the Marquesas, from whence the prevailing wind is favourable. On the 

 subject of winds the natives are practically even more observant than 

 Europeans ; their notice of physical phenomena is also acute and discerning. 

 Th^^s, the arrival of drift or pumice stone from windward, such as might occur 

 from Owhyhee, on the groups to the leeward, would to them be sure indications 

 of land, as I have known of the natives of the Indian Archipelago remark of 

 the volcanic di'ifts of Tamboro, which were carried more than 1,000 miles 

 distant. 



The present piratical and mercantile voyages taken by natives of the Indian 

 Archipelago, who are not more bold, and only a little more expert, than the 

 Polynesians, will, I think, prove to the candid inquirers thac the distances 

 reached are in no manner insuperable, and as doubts by various writers have 

 been cast on the possibility of the Southern Asiatic, though eminently maritime, 

 finding his way in the course of ages to all parts of Polynesia, these doubts must 

 evaporate when we call to recollection the tiny barks of early European 

 voyagers, such as those with which Megallhaen, Drake, Cavendish, Frobisher, 

 and others conquered space, and braved death in its gi-immist forms of scurvy 

 and starvation. Compared with the deeds of these heroes, the voyages that 

 dispersed the descendants of the Baratas over the calm waters of the Pacific 

 from island to island were but pigmy child's play. Then the ease of the 

 accomplishment of the dispersion from point to point easterly supports the 

 ethnological connection already given. 



Looking, then, at this branch of our inquiry, we are surprised at the great 

 periods required for the dispersion of barbarous races, as called for by the 

 ethnographist, and whose periods are acquiesced in by the geologist, and were 

 our conclusions made independent of these two sciences, that dispersion might 

 well be begun and ended with the time spanned by written history. 



As the knowledge of numbers is one of the first wants of mankind, they 

 form one of the roots of his language ; a table of these, extending over the area 

 of the world that we have had in review, will, with the other branches of 

 information, not be unacceptable. (See Appendix II.) It will be at once 

 seen that Tamil, or modern South Indian, bears no resemblance to the numerals 

 of any other of the languages, though, in the middle of the two extremes, the 

 cause of which has been already explained. Then, taking Malagasi as a 

 standard, it will be seen that nine out of ten in the Maori are radically similar, 

 which is also the case with the languages of Enohee, Owhyhee, and Tahiti 

 Islands ; three out of five in Malicolo (Negro) ; nine out of ten in Papua, New 

 Guinea ; all identical in Mindanau and Lampong, while in modern Malay 

 there are only five out of ten identical. Thus, as there is one law or piinciple 

 in everything, even by this very confined system of comparison, it will be seen 



