OIT THE ORiaiN AND MIGRATIONS OP THE POLYNESIA.^ NATION. 47 



but a very remarkable one — I mean the filtby practice of chew- 

 ing the areca nut or piper letel, so prevalent in the East Indies — 

 a practice which makes the mouth unnaturally red and the teeth 

 black. This Asiatic practice was observed by Captain Hunter 

 among the natives of the Duke of York's Island to the eastward 

 of New Ireland ; and by Captain Hovell, of the " Young Austra- 

 lian," among the inhabitants of Banks' Island, still further east, 

 or in 170° west longitude. 



Fourthly, — The evidence of language in regard to the origin of 

 the South ISea Islands is still stronger and less open to objection. 

 " Language," says the celebrated Home Tooke, " cannot lie, and 

 from the language of every nation we may with certainty collect 

 its origin." 



" Oue original language," observes Sir Stamford Raffles, "seems 

 in a very remote period to have pervaded the whole Indian Archi- 

 pelago, and to have spread (perhaps with the population) 

 towards Madagascar on one side and the islands in the South 

 Seas on the other." And in confirmation of this idea, Mr. 

 Marsden, the author of a history of Sumatra, and an eminent 

 authority in all matters connected with the Indian Archipelago, 

 informs us that " upon analysing a list of thirty -five Malayan 

 words, of the simplest and most genuine character, twenty will be 

 found to correspond with the Polynesian generally, seven with a 

 small portion of the dialects of the South Seas, and seven, as far 

 as our present knowledge extends with the Malayan itself." 



There is another very remarkable fact, under the head of 

 language, which I shall merely mention for the present, as I 

 shall have to refer to it more particularly in the sequel, and 

 which proves incontestibly the original identity of the Polynesian 

 race with the Indo-Chinese nations of South-eastern Asia and 

 the inhabitants of the Indian Archipelago ; for in common with 

 these nations the Polynesians, in the islands in which their social 

 system was more fully developed, as in the Tonga or Friendly 

 Islands, as compared with New Zealand, there was a language of 

 ceremony or deference distinct altogether from the language of 

 common life. My idea therefore is, that the forefathers of the 

 Polynesian race were somehow struck off" from the other or 

 Malayan tribes of the Indian Archipelago at so early a period in 

 the history of mankind as within five hundred years after the 

 deluge, according to the Hebrew chronology, and that in the 

 course of man}" successive generations, and under the influence of 

 those occasional westerly gales that prevail in the Pacific, they 

 had crossed that ocean to the eastward, within the Equatorial belt 

 of La Perouse if not rather considerably to the northward, 

 according to our very able Member, Mr. Edward Hill, from their 

 su])posed starting point in the Philippine Islands, to Pasquas or 

 Easter Island, in latitude 27° in the Southern Pacific, within 



