PORTER’S JOURNAL. 
137 
Ctallapagos, but it is evidently older, more covered with verdure, 
which has consequently; produced streams of water and rendered 
it more suitable for the residence of man. The same may be said of 
all the islands composing the groups of Marquesas and Washing¬ 
ton. In touching on this subject, I expect to show, that a consid¬ 
erable degree of confidence should be placed not only in their his¬ 
torical relations, but in their accounts of islands which have yet 
remained undiscovered by navigators. 
It has been seen by the traditionary accounts given me by 
Gattanewa that Oataia and Ovanova his wife came from an island 
called Vavao (somewhere below Nooaheevah) and peopled this 
island. It is said he brought with him a variety of plants, and that 
his forty children, with the exception of one (Po, or night) were 
named after those plants. Among the group of the Friendly Islands 
is a fine island called V avao which produces every thing in com¬ 
mon with Tongataboo, and the other islands of the group; the 
productions of which differ little from those of Nooaheevah. The 
Friendly Islands are about thirty-five degrees to the westward of 
the Washington group, and this circumstance may, by some,be con¬ 
sidered as an insurmountable obstacle to the navigation from the 
former to the latter group, on the supposition that the winds in 
this part of the world always blow from the eastward: if this was 
the case, and there were no intermediate islands, the difficulty of 
getting so far to windward in canoes, however perfect they may 
have been, would be great, and perhaps it would have been alto¬ 
gether impossible to have surmounted them. This, however, is 
not the case; the winds, sometimes for several days together, blow 
from the north west, as well as from the south west, and re¬ 
move all difficulties as to the navigation from the leeward to the 
windward islands; and this I myself experienced on leeaving the 
islands, for in three days from the time of my departure I made 
nine degrees of longitude easterly, the winds blowing chiefly 
from N.N.E. to N.W. therefore a continuation of winds equally fa¬ 
vourable would have enabled me in twelve days to have navigated 
from the Friendly to the Washington Islands: but it is not likely 
that the N.W. or S.W. winds prevail for so long a period at any¬ 
one time, nor was it necessary Oataia should have made so short 
a passage; he had many places where he could stop and recruit 
