146 DAHLGREN, THE DISCOVERY OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 



Af ter repeating the assertion that the discovery of the islands by the Spaniards 

 before Cook was "almost certain", he goes on: — 



In this way there may have been some small intermixture of foreign ideas and blood with those 

 of the aborigines two centuries and a half before their "discovery". Indeed, apparent traces of snch 

 influence have survived, in the lighter faces of certain families, in the famous cloaks and helmets worn 

 by the chiefs, — the style of which was rather Spanish than Polynesian, — in legends concerning a 

 Fonntain of Yonth similar to that which Ponce de Leon carried to Florida, in certain military evolutions, 

 in the cruciform pavements found in some of the heiaus, and possibly in numerous legends and customs 

 akin to those of the Hebrew Bible, as well as in a few words which may have been derived from the 

 Spanish language. 



It is curious that Professor Blackman, who in his excellent work has handled 

 ethnological questions with snch great knowledge and snch sound critical power, conld 

 ascribe any force at all as evidence to the circumstances here bronght forward; and yet 

 they have almost all been disposed of on what appears to me to be incontrovertible 

 gronnds. 



The qualities which distinguished the chiefs and nobles above the lower classes — 

 the greater bodily size and strengtk of the former, their higher intelligence etc, qualities 

 which, according to Jarves, rnight have led a snperficial observer to regard them as a 

 separate race — were declared by Jarves himself * to be dne not to any difference of race 

 b tit to the specially favourable conditions under which the higher classes lived: it was 

 only they who had all the good things of life at their disposal from childhood — bett er 

 food, freedom from all bodily toil except martial sports, and constant attendance from 

 obedient servants. These conditions of life, going on for centuries, had contributed to 

 give a special character to the aristocracy amongst the natives. 2 The lighter colour of 

 the skin in many families is undoubtedly due to such causes and not to a mixture of 

 European blood. 



Equally unfounded is the allegation that certain words in the Hawaiian language 

 were of Spanish derivation — pono, good, from Spanish bueno; poko, short, from Spanish 

 poco (little); puaa (pualca in other Polynesian languages), pig, from the Spanish puerco; 

 and so on. Such attempts at derivation are plainly due to lack of philological training, 

 as was shown by Georg Gerlakd. r It is not more probable that the mythical Paao's 

 name was "a metamorphic form of Paolo" ; 4 and it collapses altogether if, with Fornander 

 and others, we suppose that Paao was not a white man. 



1 Op. ät., p. 46. 



2 Especially instructive in this respect is an artide about the physical qualities of the Hawaiians by 

 the Norwegian physician E. Kraft, who spent several years on the islands. He shows that the dissimUarity 

 which previously prevailed between the different classes rapidly diminished after the arrival of the Europeans, 

 which could scarcely have been possible if the ruling classes had been of foreign race. Anthropologiske Med- 

 delelser om Kanakerne ved dr. É. Kraft (Ymer, 1891, pp. 187 — 196). 



3 Th. Waitz, Anthropologie der Xntnrcölker, fortges. von G. Gerland. Th. VI, Lpz. 1872, p. 416: 

 u Uebrigens gibt es auch sonst noch Worte, welche mit spanischen öder holländischen gleichklingen: aber was 

 beweist das? dem Sprachförscher nichts. Wären aber spanische Worte herubergenommen, so mössten wir sie 

 einmal zahlreicher, dann aber fiir solche Begriffe heriibergenonimpii rinden. welche die Spanier erst kemien 

 lehrten. Solche Worte finden sich aber nicht." 



4 Manlet Hopkins, Hawaii, p. 79. 



