Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 77 



nation which I conceive throws some light on the history of their 

 original migration, as well as on the origin of a horrible practice 

 which has certainly been extensively prevalent in that island, as 

 well as in most of the other islands of the Pacific Ocean. The 

 practice I allude to is that of cannibalism ; and the feature in the 

 political aspect of the island that serves to account in some mea- 

 sure for the origin and prevalence of that practice in New Zea- 

 land, is the absence of everything like a distinction of caste in 

 that group of islands. 



The Asiatic distinction of caste, as we shall see presently, 

 has been developed with greater exactness in the Friendly 

 Islands than in most of the other groups. But in the islands of 

 New Zealand, whose first inhabitants were in all likelihood 

 Friendly Islanders, there is no distinction of caste whatever ; 

 every New Zealander who is not a prisoner of war, i.e. a slave, 

 professing himself a rangatira, or gentleman. "We cannot sup- 

 pose, however, that a large canoe filled with natives, either hastily 

 collected after a defeat in time of war, or proceeding on a voyage 

 to some neighbouring island in time of peace — for it must have 

 been by a party of natives in such circumstances that New 

 Zealand was first discovered, — we cannot suppose that such a 

 party of natives should have left the Friendly Islands in which a 

 distinction of caste prevails without having persons on board of 

 various castes But if the wretched inmates of such a vessel 

 had by any accident been kept so long at sea (as they must 

 necessarily have been ere they reached New Zealand) as to have 

 expended all their stock of provisions, their only and their 

 miserable resource (one shudders to think of it) would have 

 been to kill and eat one of their own number. Such a thing, we 

 know, has been done again and again even by Europeans. In 

 such a case of direful emergency, the first victim among a party 

 of South Sea Islanders, would, doubtless, be the man of lowest 

 caste ; for the idea of putting a person of inferior caste on the 

 same level with a noble or chief in any circumstances, would 

 never occur to a Polynesian. It is, therefore, highly probable, 

 from the present state of native society in New Zealand, that the 

 miserable wretches who first landed on that island had previously 

 been so long at sea, that they had successively killed and eaten 

 every person of inferior caste on board their vessel ; and that ere 

 they reached the unknown land, th^y had become, through ab- 

 solute necessity, ferocious cannibals. That the taste for human 

 flesh, which had been acquired in this manner by the fathers of 

 the New Zealand nation, should afterwards have been found to 

 minister to the desire of vengeance or been indulged in for its 

 own sake, is not at all extraordinary. We read in the book of 

 Job, chapter xxxi. 31, " Oh that we had of his flesh! we cannot 

 be satisfied." And in Burckhardt's "Travels in Nubia," we 



