96 Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 



interest attaching to the little island I have just mentioned. It 

 was found uninhabited, when discovered by one of our naviga- 

 tors, but with unmistakable evidences of its having been inhabited 

 by a Polynesian people at some former period. Had the inhabi- 

 tants of that island, for some reason or other to us unknown, 

 abandoned their own island in a body, and trusting themselves to 

 the winds and waves, at length discovered and landed on Hawaii, 

 the principal island of the Saudwich Island group in the North- 

 ern Pacific ? The last of the cases of long Polynesian voyages 

 that I shall mention is that which in all likelihood must have 

 been made from St. Paul's Island in the Northern to Easter 

 Island in the Southern Pacific — a distance of eight hundred and 

 forty nautical miles in a south-easterly direction. In short, we 

 have numberless instauces of long voyages made by the Polyne- 

 sian navigators, over the whole face of the Pacific, and in every 

 possible direction — north, south, east, and west — many of them 

 protracted for weeks together, and doubtless implying, in many 

 a melancholy case, the suffering of hardships inexpressible and 

 the perpetration of unutterable crimes. In short, after such a 

 catalogue of Polynesian voyages, who can doubt either the possi- 

 bility or the probability of some unfortunate Polynesian canoe 

 having been blown off from Easter Island, by some such strong 

 westerly gale as I experienced myself, in crossing the South 

 Pacific, and been carried over the intervening extent of eighteen 

 hundred miles of ocean to America ? 



It would seem, indeed, as if Easter Island had been placed in 

 its actual position by the all-wise and beneficent Creator for the 

 express purpose, which no other island in the Pacific could have 

 served, of ensuring the discovery and settlement of that great 

 continent by the Polynesian race — of proving, so to speak, a 

 stepping stone between Polynesia and America. Situated, as 

 that island is, in 27'6 south latitude, that is well up in the South 

 Temperate Zone, and very nearly in the latitude of the city of 

 Brisbane on this coast, it is equally beyond the influence of the 

 south-easterly trade winds of the intertropical regions, and 

 within the full sweep of the strong westerly gales of the Southern 

 Pacific. Such gales as the one I experienced in the year 1830 — 

 and I have experienced various others of the same kind in five 

 subsequent voyages across the Pacific — such a gale as the one I 

 have referred to would certainly extend as far north as Easter 

 Island ; and once caught within its resistless sweep, the hapless 

 Polynesian craft would be driven before it, perhaps in less than 

 ten days, to the American land. And where, is it supposable, 

 would a Polynesian vessel in such circumstances, reach the 

 American continent ? Why, the westerly gale I have supposed 

 would admit of no deviations from a due easterly course, either 

 northward or southward, in the case of any hapless vessel acci- 



