124 Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 



germs of that knowledge existed in Polynesia, and only required 

 a suitable field for its development; for my friend Mr. Edward 

 Hill informs me that the South Sea Islanders have, in certain 

 islands, at least sufficient astronomical knowledge to steer their 

 course by the stars. 



III. I now proceed to the third and last department of our 

 inquiry, viz., to shew that the same singular manners and customs, 

 altogether unlike those of the rest of mankind, are observable 

 alike among the wilder tribes, both of the Indo- Americans and 

 the Polynesians. 



Before mentioning any of these, I would remark upon the great 

 resemblance in bodily form that has been observed by intelligent 

 travellers, in comparing the one of these tribes of mankind with 

 the other. Speaking of the Indians of Acapulco, in Mexico, on 

 the Pacific coast, Captain Basil Hall, R.N., thus writes : — " Their 

 features and colour partake somewhat of the Malay character ; 

 their foreheads are broad and square ; their eyes small, and not 

 deep seated ; their cheekbones prominent, and their heads covered 

 with black straight hair ; their stature about the medium standard ; 

 their frame compact and well made. "J 



For my own part, having seen quite closely eight Brazilian 

 Indians, who manned the Emperor Don Pedro's boat in the 

 harbour of Rio Janeiro, in the year 1823, immediately after the 

 Revolution that issued in the establishment of the Brazilian 

 Empire, I would have said, had I not known who they were, that 

 they were so many New Zealanders. 



One of the most remarkable peculiarities in the manners and 

 customs of nations is their different modes of disposing of the 

 dead. On one of my voyages to England, in the year 1839, our 

 good ship having sprung a leak a few days after leaving this port, 

 we had to run for repairs to the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand, 

 where we lay about ten days, shortly before the colonisation of 

 the New Zealand group had commenced. During my stay I 

 visited the cemetery of the Bay of Islands tribe, situated close to 

 the native village of Kororarika. There were no graves, however, 

 to be seen in the cemetery : the dead bodies having each been 

 wrapped up in mats, and laid upon trestles raised a few feet from 

 the ground, and left to putrefy in the open air. During the 

 following year, before my return to the colony, I happened to 

 visit the exhibition of American Indian curiosities of a Mr. 

 Catlin, an American gentleman, of a very enthusiastic and 

 adventurous character, who had been travelling for many years 

 among the wild Indians of that country, and with whose family 

 I had in the meantime become acquainted in New York ; his 

 wife, whom he had left behind him in the United States, having 



% Captain Basil Hall's Voyage to South America, vol. ii., page 125. 



