ON THE ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS OP THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 67 



Perhaps, however, the most remarkable feature in the civilisation 

 of the Indo- American nations was their picture writing and 

 their hieroglyphics ; bj which they were enabled to transmit to 

 posterity a knowledge of the memorable events of successive 

 ages. The progress made by the Mexicans in these arts of a 

 higher civilisation was truly wonderful, and the long columns of 

 hieroglyphics carved in stone on their colossal monuments, and 

 resembling in some measure the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, 

 carry us back, as almost everything else does in Indo- American 

 civilisation, to the remotest period in the history of man. Unfor- 

 tunately there has as yet been no Champollion, as in Egypt — no 

 liawlinson, as in Assyria — to interpret these wonderful remains of 

 an extinct civilisation ; but although there are no such remains 

 as the picture writing of the ancient Mexicans in the South Sea 

 Islands, it is quite evident that the Polynesians were on the right 

 track towards the much higher level of the chroniclers and the 

 picture writers of Mexico, and that all that was wanting for the 

 development of their idea was a suitable field, which the com- 

 paratively narrow limits of the South Sea Islands and their 

 small population did not present. " Along the southern coast of 

 the Island of Hawaii," says Mr. Ellis in his Polynesian Researches, 

 " both on the east and west sides, we frequently saw a number 

 of straight lines, semi-circles, or concentric rings, with some rude 

 imitations of the human figure, cut or carved in the compact 

 rocks of lava. They did not appear to have been cut with an 

 iron instrument, but with a stone hatchet, or a stone less frangible 

 than the rock on which they were pourtrayed. On inquiry, we 

 found that they had been made by former travellers, from a motive 

 similar to that which induces a person to carve his initials on a 

 stone or tree, or a traveller to record his name in an album — to 

 inform his successors that he has been there. When there were 

 a number of concentric circles with a dot or mark in the centre, 

 the dot signified a man, and the number of rings the number of 

 the party who had circumambulated the island. When there 

 was a ring, and a number of marks it denoted the same, the 

 number of marks showing of how many the party consisted, and 

 the ring, that they had travelled completely round the island ; 

 but when there was only a semicircle it denoted that they had 

 returned after reaching the place where it was made." 



I am inclined to differ from Mr. Ellis when he regards these 

 rude specimens of picture writing as the first eff'orts of an 

 uncivilised people towards the construction of a language of 

 symbols. I am inclined to regard them, in common with those 

 colossal remains of the architecture of the earlier Polynesians, 

 which their degenerate offspring of the present day can only 

 behold with amazement, rather as the scanty but interesting 

 relics of an ancient and primitive civilisation, of which both the 



