98 Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 



of Peru, which is separated from that of Chili by the desert of 

 Atacama. And this may explain the fact of which the Honorable 

 President of the Legislative Council, Sir Terence Murray, has 

 informed me he has read an account somewhere within the last 

 few years — viz., that of certain South Sea Islanders having landed 

 from a canoe, in a state of great exhaustion, on the coast of Peru ; 

 for that which has happened once in these islands may happen 

 again at any time. And it also, perhaps may throw some light 

 on the famous tradition of the Peruvians, that, long after the 

 settlement of their country, some mysterious personages, whom 

 they call Manco Capac and his wife, arrived among them from 

 the regions of the west, and were regarded by the natives as 

 Atuas, or divinities. For hundreds of years after all recollection 

 of the original migration may have passed from the native mind, 

 another calamity of a similar kind may have occurred off Easter 

 Island, and carried another canoeful of its inhabitants, including 

 Manco Capac and his wife, to the Peruvian coast. At all events, 

 at whatever point on the "West Coast of South America, either 

 the first or any subsequent landing of unfortunate inhabitants of 

 Easter Island may have been effected, that island was unques- 

 tionably the point from which the original migration was directed, 

 and the "West Coast of South America, somewhere towards the 

 Equator, was the point at which it must have arrived. 



Chili and Peru were, therefore, in all likelihood the first por- 

 tions of the American continent that were ever occupied and 

 settled by man.* From thence, in the course of ages, emigration 

 would extend northwards, eastwards, and southwards ; traversing 

 and dispersing its germs of population over Central America and 

 the islands of the Caribbean Sea ; ascending and occupying the 

 elevated plateaus of Mexico ; stemming the currents of the 

 Mississippi and its mighty tributaries to the lakes of Canada and 

 the frozen shores of Hudson's Bay ; penetrating into the dark 

 forests of the Brazils, and stretching out to the Straits of Magel- 

 lan and the famine- stricken shores of Tierra Del Fuego. In 

 short, my theory is that the aborigines of America are all one 

 people, from North to South and from East to "West ; and as the 

 three continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, were peopled suc- 

 cessively by the descendants of the eight persons who landed on 

 Mount Ararat from the good ship, the Ark, so I firmly believe 

 that both continents of America were peopled by the descendants 

 of the hand/ul of famished Polynesians who had survived the 

 voyage from Easter Island to the W r est Coast of America. 



Before adducing the testimonies of men of the highest stand- 

 ing in the literary and scientific world, in confirmation of this 



♦Note — " In the New World," says Baron Humboldt, " at the beginning 

 of its conquest, the natives were collected into large societies only on the 

 ridge of the Cordilleras and the coasts opposite to Asia. 



