﻿5 4 Transactions. — Miscelkmeous. 



as " oral recoixls of past events," but that they are entitled to be received 

 as such, only in so far as they bear the test of reasonable criticism, and can be 

 supported by probabilities arising from the character, position, and circum- 

 stances of the people to whom they are ajiplied. In the present inquiry I 

 propose to act upon the rules which I have thus ventured to lay down, and so 

 to ascertain to what extent the " Traditions " in question (using the tei-m 

 provisionally) may fairly claim to come within the foregoing definition. 



It will have been observed by those who have perused these " Traditions," 

 that the ancestors of the present race of New Zealanders are invariably 

 represented as having migrated, at a comparatively recent period, from a place 

 called " Hawaiki," the locality of which, however, is utterly unknown to the 

 ■present people, and has, certainly, been equally unknown to their ancestors for 

 very many generations. Now, if the migrations mentioned in the '• Traditions " 

 had taken place at periods so recent as those which are assigned to them, the 

 loss of all knowledge of the actual position of Hawaiki by so enterprising a 

 race as the New Zealanders, would be extremely singular, it appearing, if we 

 are to credit the narratives in this respect, not only that the voyage from 

 Hawaiki to these Islands and back again, had more than once been undertaken 

 without hesitation, and performed without difficulty, but that on one occasion, 

 at least, it had been successfully performed by persons who had not made it 

 before, guided solely by instructions from a previous explorer. Still the fact of 

 migration is insisted upon in all the narratives, and although, in our present 

 state of geographical and nautical knowledge, the possibility of any such 

 migrations as those which are narrated, is scarcely admissible, we should not, 

 for reasons which will appear in the sequel, be justified on this ground alone in 

 rejecting the "Traditions." A precisely similar difficulty presents itself in 

 regard to the inhabitants of Madagascar, who, even in a higher degree than 

 the natives of New Zealand, offer an exception to the ordinary rules by which 

 we ar-e gu.ided in fixing the origin of Island populations. Madagascar lies at 

 a distance of only 300 miles from the Eastern Coast of Africa, and, in accordance 

 with observed rules, we should, in the absence of proof to the contrary, 

 unhesitatingly assume that the affinities of its Flora and Fauna, including 

 raan, as well as of its language, would lie with those of that continent. 

 But this is not the case as regards its people, who belong to the same 

 branch of the Polynesian races, to which the inhabitants of these Islands, 

 lying 130° to the eastward, and between the 35th and 40th parallels of south 

 latitude, and the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, lying 155° to the east- 

 ward, and in the 23° of north latitude, also belong. Now the nearest land 

 to Madagascar, Avhich is occupied by people allied to its inhabitants, is nearly 

 3,000 miles distant, toithout any intervening station, making the peopling of 

 that Island, if it was effected by migration, a greater difficulty than the 



