72 ON THE OEIGIK AND MIGEATIONS OF THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 



There are various other practices or observances common to the 

 Polynesians and Indo-Americans which I shall merely enumerate 

 without dwelling upon them at any length. The necessity for 

 utu, or satisfaction for any injury received, and the cherishing of 

 feuds arising in this way for generations, is equally distinctive of 

 the New Zealanders and the Indo-Americans, especially those of 

 the northern continent. The manufacture of an intoxicating 

 beverage from a root, called in the South Sea Islands cava, and in 

 the equatorial regions of America cassava, evidently the same 

 word, is equally common to both, as well as the very singular and 

 disgusting mode of its manufacture ; the root being chewed in 

 some instances by boys, in others by young women, and in others 

 again, as among the Cunas at the Isthmus of Darien, by old 

 women ; the residuum being collected in a large vessel and water 

 poured over it, thereby inducing fermentation. The mode of 

 catching fish also by throwing an intoxicating herb or root into 

 the water ; the separation of women, and prohibiting them from 

 touching their food with their own hands for a certain time after 

 childbirth, and the caste of blood being transmissible through the 

 female and not through the male, are also equally common to 

 both of these very ancient races of the family of man. 



I have thus shown, I trust to the satisfaction of the Society, 

 that the forefathers of the Polynesian race were separated from 

 the rest of mankind, in the very infancy of the post-diluvial 

 world, in the remotest ages in the history of man. I have also 

 shown that at the period at which this separation took place, the 

 world must have been in a comparatively advanced state of civili- 

 zation, implying at least very considerable skill in the arts of 

 life, and great ability in the use and management of the mechani- 

 cal powers. I have shown, moreover, that the impression of this 

 primitive civilization must have been photographed, so to speak, 

 on the Polynesian mind, to be reproduced wherever they went, in 

 every suitable field. I have likewise shown that after having 

 crossed over almost the whole extent of the broadest part of the 

 Pacific, the amphibious islanders reached at length the farthest 

 east of the inhabited islands of that ocean, viz. : — Easter Island, 

 in latitude 276 S., and that from that island, which is only about 

 2,000 miles from the M^est coast of America, a mere handful of 

 unfortunates must have been caught suddenly in one of those 

 violent westerly gales that are so frequent in the Southern 

 Pacific, and been blown across the intervening tract of ocean to 

 the American land — landing somewhere in the State of Chili 

 near Copiapo, in the latitude of Easter Island. And I have 

 expressed my own opinion very strongly that this arrival of a few 

 famished Polynesians on the west coast of America must have 

 taken place some time between twelve and fifteen hundred years 

 before the birth of Christ ; that is some time between the death 



