Origin and 3£igrations of the Polynesian Nation. 75 



which occurred about thirty-five years since, a whaling captain 

 out of this port, fell in with a canoe drifting about many hundred 

 miles from the nearest land. There were two dead bodies in the 

 canoe, while those who remained alive were in the last stage of 

 exhaustion. These calamitous accidents, arising from sudden 

 squalls have, doubtless, been often aggravated, and rendered un- 

 necessarily fatal by the mental character and disposition of the 

 South Sea Islanders themselves ; for, conjoining a remarkable 

 proneness to despondency with their spirit of adventure, when- 

 ever the wind blows strong and adverse in their short and frequent 

 voyages from island to island, instead of redoubling their exer- 

 tions, they generally pull down all sail, and extend themselves m 

 sullen despair fdong the bottom of their canoes, abandoning them- 

 selves and their tiny vessel to the mercy of the wind and waves. 



In addition to these cases of accident from squalls and tem- 

 pests, maritime enterprise, which is the characteristic of islanders, 

 has also led, doubtless in numberless instances, to voyages of 

 discovery on the part of the South Sea Islanders, as Quixotic as 

 that of Columbus must have appeared to most of his contem- 

 poraries. For example, a solitary native of the Fiji Islands had 

 been driven to sea by some sudden storm towards the close of the 

 last century, when fishing off the shore in his canoe, and had 

 landed at length on the Friendly Islands, 360 miles from his 

 native isle. In such circumstances no European, unacquainted 

 with the science and art of navigation, would have ventured to 

 put to sea in search of the distant island from which the stranger 

 had been accidentally driven. But the thoughtless Polynesian, 

 fired by the spirit of adventure, disregards the suggestions of 

 prudence in such cases. Stimulated, accordingly, by the intel- 

 ligence he had thus received from the stranger, of the existence 

 of other islands in a particular direction, Tooi Hata Fatai, a chief 

 of the Friendly Islands, set sail for the Fiji Islands some time 

 afterwards, with two hundred and fifty followers, in three large 

 canoes, each of which must have carried upwards of eighty men, 

 with provisions and water for the voyage. In such voyages, how- 

 ever, the unskilfulness of the pilot, or the unexpected change of 

 the wind, would often carry the adventurous islanders far beyond 

 their reckoning ; and in such circumstances they would either 

 founder at sea, or perish of hunger, or be driven they knew not 

 whither, till they reached some unknown and previously undis- 

 covered island. In the latter case they would gladly settle on 

 the new found land, fearful of again trusting themselves to the 

 ocean, and entirely ignorant as to what course they should steer 

 for their native isle. Since the commencement of the present 

 century, and the formation of missionary settlements on certain 

 of the more prominent Polynesian groups, there have been re- 

 peated and well authenticated instances of adventurers having 



