﻿W. T. L. T RAVERS. — Traditions of the New Zealand ers. 55 



peopling of New Zealand from the supposed centre of dispersion of the common 

 race. The case of Madagascar has, in effect, been long treated as an ethnological 

 mystery, and I think that the case of New Zealand will, when the " Traditions " 

 now under discussion are reduced to their true value, be looked upon as 

 involving little less diiSculty. Comparing the manners and ciistoms of the 

 inhabitants of Madagascar with those of the New Zealanders, we find that the 

 former are almost entitled to the position of a civilized people, and yet, so far 

 as I have been able to ascertain, they possess neither historical records, nor 

 monuments of any kind calculated to throw light upon the time or the manner 

 in which they first occupied that Island. Baron Humboldt, brother of the 

 great traveller, thus expresses his opinion on the subject : — " There is no doubt 

 that the Malagasi belongs to the family of the Malayan languages, and bears 

 the greatest affinity to the languages spoken in Java, Sumatra, and the whole 

 Indian Archipelago, but it remains entirely enigmatical in what manner and at 

 what period this Malayan population made its way to Madagascar." Mr. Ellis 

 remai-ks, however, that it has been generally admitted that there is reasonable 

 evidence that the vessels of the Polynesian races were formerly much larger than 

 they are at present, and that we have sufficiently well authenticated accounts 

 of voyages, long in point of duration and of distance, having been performed by 

 people of these races in recent times, to raise a fair presumption of their former 

 ability to spread themselves over even the widely extended regions which they 

 now occupy. It would, indeed, be even more singular than the actual occurrence 

 of such migrations, that a people occupying a country at such a distance as New 

 Zealand from any other land, and so entirely out of the ordinary line of the navi- 

 gation of the Polynesian races, should possess traditional accounts of such events, 

 imless they were founded upon some long antecedent fact. But whilst this 

 circumstance gives weight to the proposition involved in the " Ti-aditions," 

 that the ancestors of the present people migrated to these Islands from some 

 part of Polynesia, then inhabited by the same race — and justifies us, more 

 especially when taken in connection with the case of Madagascar, in accepting 

 migration as a fact — it affords us no clue whatever to the locality of " Hawaiki," 

 or to the probable date of the events in question. My own belief is, that the 

 whole of the narratives based upon this recollection, are, so far as they pretend 

 to give historical accounts of contemporaneous events, pure fictions ; and that, 

 so far as they represent actual events at all, they only represent compai-atively 

 recent occurrences, which have been engi-afted upon the leading idea by some 

 imaginative minds. Accepting migration, however, as a fact, I will now 

 proceed to inquire to what extent we are aided by the " Traditions " them- 

 selves, in fixing either the locality of Hawaiki, or the probable dates of the 

 various migrations referred to in them. 



It is noteworthy, in regard to the latter question, that the migrations 



