526 COMPULSORY MIGRATIONS IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 



long - time 011 the western group of islands in the Pacific, found at Vate 

 the blind chief Bula, his interpreter, and several young people who 

 were descendants of Tongans, and had also come there by accident. 1 

 Bula called himself Sualo. He left Samoa in a double canoe about the 

 time of the Atua war (1825) in company with fifty other persons, princi- 

 pally Tongans. They lived a number of years in the new home to which 

 the wind had borne them, but when they set out to seek the old one 

 they missed their native islands, and remained permanently on Vate. 

 Turner also found on the island of Lifu Polynesians who, like Bula and 

 his companions, had been carried to this western island. It is also 

 stated that people have been driven upon Tanna from Samoa and Tonga. 

 The islands of Erromanga and Immer have undoubtedly been peopled 

 from the east by a race whose dialect is akin to that of Tongan. Their 

 inhabitants had thus made the same journey as their countrymen on 

 Tanna. 2 Codrington, who is well acquainted with the Melanesian lan- 

 guages, mentions in the western range of islands in our second district 

 a large number of localities which have received Polynesian elements 

 of population, and he, too, attributes these immigrations to accidental 

 causes. Besides Uvea of the Loyalty Islands, he cites Fotuna, which 

 is identical with Erromanga or Eranan, already mentioned, and Vate. 

 This influence also extends to several islands of the Shepherd group, 

 and shows itself especially in the one seen by Cook and named from its 

 position Mai, or Three Hills. But he goes still farther, and not only 

 includes the district north of the Banks Islands (Tikopia) and the 

 Swallow group- (Matema), situated near Santa Cruz, but, with Bennell 

 and Bellona, embraces the southern, and with Ongtong Java, near Isa- 

 bella, the central Solomon group. Codrington himself met on tlie island 

 of Ureparapara, one of the Banks group, a man and woman with their 

 son, who had been cast ashore there from a Polynesian island; and even 

 at Saddle Island 3 he found children who were descendants of Poly- 

 nesians who had been stranded there. Lastly, just before his stay on 

 the Banks Islands people had arrived two successive years from Tonga 

 and remained a considerable time. 4 



'Nineteen Years in Western Polynesia, page 398. Bastian : Inselgruppen, page 87. 

 Murray, Missions in Western Polynesia, also relates this event, page 233. According 

 to him, there were Samoans in the party. 



s Bastian : Inselgruppen, page 87 ; Gamier reports immigrations from Viti into Lifu. 

 Ibid., page 180. 



r Saddle Island in Torres Strait can not be meant, as an island lying nearer would 

 probably have been reached. 



''Codrington: Melanesian Languages, page 7 et seq. Hale states that Quiros had 

 taken a man prisoner on Taumako, who told him that arrows had been brought to 

 this island from a distant country called Pouro. He supposes Pouro to be in the 

 Indian Ocean and thinks that the arrows must have come from India ; but Guppy cor- 

 rects this, and says that the place meant is Bonro, which lies only 500 kilometers west 

 of Taumako, while Pouro is more than 3,600 kilometers. (United States Exploring 

 Expedition, V, p. 195. See also Burney, History of the Discoveries, II, page 308.) 



