88 Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 



each other, as they happen to be inferior or superior. A servant 

 addresses his master in the language of deference, a child his 

 parent, a wife her husband (if there be much disparity in their 

 ages), and the courtier his prince. The superior replies in the 

 ordinary dialect. "J But this remarkable peculiarity is equally 

 observable in those of the South Sea Islands, in which there is 

 anything like a regular government or a distinction of ranks. I 

 have already alluded to it in enumerating the various castes into 

 which society is divided in the Friendly Islands ; it was also pre- 

 valent in Tahiti, and it doubtless affords a strong presumptive 

 evidence of an ancient affinity between the Polynesian and 

 Chinese, or Indo-Chinese nations. 



The farthest east of Captain Cook's discoveries in the Pacific were 

 Easter Island, situated in latitude 27'6 S., and in longitude 109 - 17 

 W. In that remote island he found the same Polynesian race, speak- 

 ing the same primitive language, and practising the same singular 

 customs and institutions as he had witnessed elsewhere in the 

 more westerly groups. They had thus reached in their wonderful 

 easterly migrations a point upwards of a hundred and twenty 

 degrees of longitude, or 7200 nautical miles from their original 

 point of departure in the Indian Archipelago. One is almost 

 overpowered at the vastness of such an idea ; but here it stands 

 out incontestably in actual fact. In Easter Island, as is known 

 to be the case also in certain other of the Polynesian Isles, the 

 great navigator found incontestable evidences of an extinct civili- 

 sation, in certain colossal architectural remains, which the present 

 natives, unable to conceive of their being the work of mere men, 

 ascribe to the Atuas or gods. 



It is thus evident, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the 

 races of men who had traversed successively so vast an extent of 

 ocean, and settled such an infinity of isles, were at one time in a 

 much higher state of civilisation, and much better acquainted 

 with the arts of life, than their present representatives and 

 descendants. They had evidently brought along with them from 

 their original point of departure in the far west a far higher state 

 of civilisation than has existed anywhere m the South Sea Islands 

 for ages past. In the isolated state of the different groups of islands, 

 and especially in the normal state of incessant warfare that has 

 prevailed in all of them, it was not to be wondered at that the 

 light of a higher civilisation which had characterised the earlier 

 ages of their existence should have been gradually obscured, and 

 at length extinguished. In the island of Tongataboo, in the 

 Friendly Islands group, there is an ancient monument known as 

 the tomb of Toobo Tooi, some famous chief of the olden time, con- 

 structed of immense blocks of stone that must have been brought 



% Miscellaneous Works, page 23. 



