74 Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 



South Sea Islanders are indigenous, or that their islands are 

 merely the summits of the mountains of a submerged continent or 

 continents that once existed in that part of the terraqueous globe 

 — the remarkable phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean being the 

 creation rather than the disappearance of land, in the numberless 

 coral islands that are constantly rising up from the depths of the 

 ocean and at length becoming solid land — without noticing any 

 further either of these theories, I would observe that the Poly- 

 nesians, like all other islanders, are a maritime people, very fre- 

 quently if not constantly at sea, and ever and anon making 

 short voyages from island to island in their respective groups. 

 Now, although the trade-winds that blow from the eastward in 

 both hemispheres are remarkably regular, they are not uniformly 

 so ; and in such exceptional cases as do occur the islanders are 

 occasionally overtaken by storms blowing in a contrary direction 

 to that of the usual trade-winds, and are carried out perhaps 

 hundreds of miles into the boundless ocean. Por example, 

 Captain Beechy, R.N., fell in, in the course of one of his voyages 

 in the Pacific, with a party of South Sea Islanders, from Tahiti, 

 who had been driven in this way six hundred miles from their 

 native isle by a gale of westerly wind, and who in all likelihood 

 would all have perished had they not thus been providentially 

 discovered. Captain Duke, an old whaling captain, well known 

 in his time in this city, with whom I made a voyage to England 

 in the year 1839, told me that he had also fallen in, in one of his 

 whaling voyages, with a large canoe filled with South Sea 

 Islanders, with their provisions all but expended, and distant 

 many hundred miles from their native isle. He very kindly took 

 them all on board his ship, and kept them there till he could 

 land them, as he did at length, on their own island. Another 

 whaling captain, equally well known in this city, in the olden 

 time, I mean, Mr. Joseph Thomson, with whom I also made a 

 voyage to England, in 1824, told me that he had fallen in, in one 

 of his whaling voyages, with a large Tahitian canoe with a party 

 of natives en board, all but exhausted, and several hundred miles 

 from their native island. He took them on board his vessel and 

 supplied them with all that was requisite for their restoration 

 and refreshment ; but, as Tahiti was greatly out of his course at 

 the time, he gave the islanders a compass, and showed them how 

 to steer in order to reach it. The natives, as he afterwards 

 learned, watched their silent guide with intense interest during 

 the whole course of their homeward voyage ; and when the sum- 

 mits of the well known mountains of their native isle hove in 

 sight at length, they leaped up in their canoe and danced for joy ; 

 and then, looking wistfully to the compass, said, " The cunning 

 little thing, it saw it all the time." 



In the only other case of the kind which I shall mention, and 



