44 ON THE OEIGI&T AlfD MIGEATIONS OP THE P0LT]NT:SIAN NATION. 



Wales and certain groups of islands in the Pacific, I employed 

 myself as I could from time to time in investigating tlie 

 manners and customs of the islanders gCDerally and the modes and 

 causes of their migrations from island to island, and in endeavour- 

 ing, if possible, to ascertain from virhat part of the surrounding 

 world they originally came. 



The Polynesians, like all other islanders, are a maritime people, 

 very frequently if not constantly at sea, and ever and anon making 

 short voyages from island to island in their respective groups. Now 

 although the trade winds in the Pacific are remarkably regular, they 

 are not so uniformly. Sudden and violent westerly gales arise from 

 time to time, and when these are contrary to the course of the 

 unfortunate islander, passing perhaps from one well-known island 

 to another, he may be driven out to sea, notwithstanding all his 

 efibrts to the contrary, and may never regain his native isle. In 

 such cases, unless he happens to be cast on some previously un- 

 known island, he will at length be engulphed in the waves. This 

 then is the first of the w^ays in which the numberless islands of 

 the Pacific Ocean have been successively peopled, in the course 

 of ages past, at a cost of human life and suffering absolutely 

 appalling to think of. The second of the modes in which the 

 numberless groups of the Pacific Ocean have been successively 

 peopled in past ages is from the event of war. In all past time 

 the islands of the Pacific have been the scene of almost 

 perpetual and savage warfare ; and it has often happened that the 

 vanquished party have been obliged to trust themselves in their 

 canoes to the mercy of the winds and waves, and the chance of 

 being cast upon some unknown island, rather than remain in their 

 native island to be butchered wholesale by their victors. This 

 has in all likelihood been the origin of cannibalism in the South 

 Sea Islands, the wretched survivors in these uncertain and peril- 

 ous voyages being compelled from sheer necessity to kill and prey 

 upon one another ere they could reach, if they ever did, any land. 

 The state of things I have thus pourtrayed accounts for another 

 and remarkable fact in Polynesian history, viz., the absence of any 

 distinction of caste among the natives of the New Zealand group 

 of islands, while in the Tonga or Friendly Islands, which the 

 vicinity and the resemblance of language in these groups would 

 indicate as the original home of the New Zealand race, there is a 

 full development of caste. Por in whatever manner the original 

 forefathers of New Zealand had left Tonga, their supposed native 

 isle, all of the lower castes would be mercilessly butchered one by 

 one for the subsistence of the rest, and the whole of the original 

 inhabitants of their new found land would thus be Eangatiras or 

 gentlemen. The spirit of adventure, which in many cases has been 

 remarkably developed among the South Sea Islanders, must also 

 have tended strongly to the spread of mankind over the number- 



