POLYNESIAN" MIGRATIONS. 287 



THE DIEECTION OF THE TRANSPACIFIC DISTRIBUTION. 



In addition to the testimony already noticed as indicating a rather 

 recent arrival of the cocoa palm in the Indian Ocean, the probabilities 

 of a westward rather than an eastward distribution of the species are 

 strongly suggested by an argument brought forward by Seeman 1 as 

 favoring a Polynesian rather than an Asiatic origin. The Polyne- 

 sians, like other aborigines of the tropics, are fond of fermented 

 drinks, but they are quite unacquainted with the use of the sap of the 

 cocoanut or of other palms for this purpose, and, like the aborigines of 

 the American tropics, 2 they have recourse to infusions of roots in 

 which fermentation has been induced by preliminary mastication in 

 the human mouth. In the Malay region and in tropical Asia this cus- 

 tom seems not to exist, the juices of several Asiatic palms having fur- 

 nished from remote times the basis of fermented drinks and a variety 

 of other useful substances. Even the word " toddy " has been traced 

 back to the Sanscrit without change, though scholars prefer to write 

 it tade. 



Had the Polynesians, therefore, once known the process, they would probably 

 never have forgotten so easy a way of obtaining sugar, vinegar, yeast, and a pleasant 

 drink, the strength of which may be regulated by time to any man's taste. So 

 either the Polynesians could never have come from Eastern Asia, or else, after 

 spreading over the South Sea, ages must have elapsed before the cocoanut made its 

 appearance in those waters, so that the process of toddy making (there being no 

 other suitable Polynesian palm to operate upon) had been entirely forgotten, and 

 even disappeared from native traditions. 



This amounts to the proposition that if the Polynesians originated 

 in Asia they left that continent before the invention of todd} T , and 

 before the cocoanut came into use, or at a period so remote as not to 

 correspond to the current supposition that the Polynesian occupation 



1 Flora Vitiensis, p. 276 (London, 1865-73). 



2 To a very limited extent use was made in America of the juice of palms. In Cen- 

 tral America wine was made from the juice of Acrocomia. That this was an indige- 

 nous and not an introduced custom is indicated by the fact that Acrocomia is a 

 strictly American genus, and that, although it extends from Mexico and Cuba to 

 Brazil and Paraguay, the drinking of its juice seems to have been localized in Cen- 

 tral America in regions where one of the species, A. vinifera, is said to be extremely 

 abundant. That the custom was truly aboriginal and not brought from the Philip- 

 pines by Spanish agency is also proved by the fact that it was observed by Columbus 

 on his fourth voyage. Moreover, the palm was not tapped in the Asiatic manner, 

 but the juice was squeezed from its pith, necessitating the destruction of the tree. 



In Colombia, Humboldt describes the natives as securing wine from Cocos butyra- 

 cea by felling the trees and excavating a cavity in the upper part of the trunk, in 

 which the juice continued to exude for eighteen or twenty days. 



The art of collecting tuba, as now practiced in Mexico, is believed to have been 

 introduced from the Philippines at a comparatively recent period. 



