162 The Polynesians and their Migrations. [April, 



limits this term to the brown races spread over a wide area from the 

 Sandwich Islands in the north to New Zealand on the south, and 

 from Easter Island on the east to the Tonga and Samoan groups on 

 the west, but all speaking dialects of one well-marked language. 

 Now what M. Quatrefages attempts to prove is, that these people 

 are simply Malays, who migrated from some islands of the Malayan 

 Archipelago (probably Bouru in the Moluccas), and have more or 

 less intermingled with the races of Melanesia and Micronesia. His 

 evidence to prove this is of two kinds : — first, he endeavours to show 

 that a migration has taken place ; secondly, that the Polynesians are in 

 their physical, mental, and moral characteristics, a true Malayan race. 

 1. Migrations. — We find in M. Quatrefages' volume a very 

 careful summary of all the native accounts of their migrations, and 

 also of the involuntary migrations that have recently occurred. 

 These, no doubt, prove that the Sandwich Islands and New Zealand 

 have been peopled by emigrants from the Marquesas and Tahiti, 

 and the fact of this emigration is confirmed by the independent 

 evidence of language. It is proved, therefore, that the Polynesians 

 have passed over immense spaces of ocean, in directions not es- 

 pecially favoured by winds or currents, and thus the difficulty of 

 any migration, merely from its distance, is quite overcome. It is 

 further shown that all the traditions point to the Samoan group 

 and the Fiji Islands as the central points to which almost all 

 Polynesians trace their origin. It is to be observed here that these 

 are the largest of all the islands in the central Pacific inhabited by 

 the Polynesian race, and it is these, therefore, that we should 

 naturally expect to have sent out colonies to the smaller islands. 

 So far we have the strongest corroboration of there having actually 

 been a migration in the fact of the community of language, and all 

 the legends of these migrations speak of them as having been made 

 by simple men, the natural ancestors of the existing Polynesians. 

 But in the legend which refers the origin of the Samoans themselves 

 to a migration from a large country " further west," we get into pure 

 legend, — for the mythic Boulotou, whence the first inhabitants are 

 said to have come, is a spiritual and not a real country, and 

 these inhabitants are believed to have been not men, but inferior 

 gods. And even the direct evidence of migration having been 

 generally from the west, is by no means so clear as M. Quatre- 

 fages appears to believe ; for one of the latest authorities on the 

 subject, Mr. W. T. Pritchard, who has spent his whole life in the 

 Pacific, and who from his long residence in the Fiji and Samoan 

 Islands as British Consul, and his intimate knowledge of the 

 Polynesian languages, is well qualified to give an opinion on this 

 matter, says it is just the contrary. In his 'Polynesian Kemi- 

 niscences,' p. 402, he observes : " It is, however, remarkable that in 

 all these many instances of authenticated driftings, the course of the 



