Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Ration. 97 



dentally brought within its power; and such, a vessel would 

 therefore, reach the unknown land as nearly as possible in h 

 latitude of Easter Island, that is, somewhere about the prese" 

 seaport town of Copiapo, in the Republic of Chili. That, I an, 

 firmly persuaded, was the place where the American contine? 

 was first trodden by the foot of man. 



Now we are all sufficiently acquainted with the habits of man- 

 kind to be aware of the fact, that when any number of persons, 

 whether savage or civilised, go forth from the place of their 

 nativity, whether by design or by accident — whether as European 

 colonists, or as men in a much lower social condition, driven by 

 an unexpected gale from one island to another — such persons 

 will infallibly carry with them, and reproduce in their new-found 

 land, the peculiar institutions of the place of their nativity, 

 together with the manners and customs, and especially the 

 language, of the " old folks at home." The Brazilian of Rio 

 Janeiro, for example, builds his house to the present day exactly 

 like those of the city of Oporto, in Portugal, from which his 

 forefathers originally came ; and the old Dutch houses of the 

 city of New Amsterdam, now New York, were exactly like those 

 of the old city from which it was named in Holland, while the 

 peculiar institution of that waterland, its canals, forsooth, are 

 reproduced even in Batavia. Tne Grerman carries much of the 

 Fatherland with him, and reproduces it, wherever he pitches his 

 tent beyond seas, whether in America or in Australia ; and we 

 English in the colonies are notorious for adhering to the modes 

 and practices of the mother country, however unsuited to the 

 climate of the country in which we have settled. If, therefore, 

 we find that the peculiar type of the long extinct Indo- American 

 civilisation, so unlike everything previously known to mankind, 

 was exactly a Polynesian type — if we find that the manners and 

 customs of the American Indians are in numberless, and these 

 most remarkable instances, identical with those of the South Sea 

 Islanders, and that there are still unmistakable traces even of an 

 ancient identity of language, how can we doubt for a moment as 

 to where these Indo- Americans came from, or where and what 

 was the prolific hive from which they were originally swarmed ? 



My theory, therefore, is that the American continent was first 

 reached on its west coast, somewhere about the latitude of 

 Copiapo, in the States of Chili, by a few natives of Easter Island, 

 in the Southern Pacific, who had been accidentally blown off 

 from the land by one of those strong westerly gales that are so 

 prevalent in that ocean, and were thereby driven across to 

 America. It is possible, indeed, that a canoe in such circum- 

 stances, coming at length within the influence of the southerly 

 wind that prevails for a great part of the year along the west 

 coast of South America, would be carried northward to the coast 



