48 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
dence is striking between these fabulous traditions, and 
those so circumstantially detailed by the natives of some 
of the islands of the Pacific, especially in the Hawaiian 
account of the voyage of Kamapiikai, to the land where 
the inhabitants enjoyed perpetual health and youthful 
beauty, where the wai ora (life-giving fountain) removed 
every internal malady, and every external deformity or 
paralyzed decrepitude, from all those who were plunged 
beneath its salutary waters. A tabular view of a num¬ 
ber of words in the Malayan, Asiatic, or the Madagasse, 
the American, and the Polynesian languages, would 
probably shew, that at some remote period, either the 
inhabitants of these distant parts of the world main¬ 
tained frequent intercourse with each other, or that colo¬ 
nies from some one of them, originally peopled, in part 
or altogether, the others. The striking analogy between 
the numerals and other parts of the language, and several 
of the customs, of the aborigines of Madagascar, and 
those of the Malays who inhabit the Asiatic islands, 
many thousands of miles distant in one direction, and of 
the Polynesians more remote in another, shews that they 
were originally one people, or that they had emigrated 
from the same source. Many words in the language, 
and several of the traditions, customs, &c. of the Ameri¬ 
cans, so strongly resemble those of Asia, as to warrant the 
inference that they originally came from that part of the 
world. Whether some of the tribes who originally passed 
from Asia, along the Kurile or Aleutian Islands, across 
Behring’s straits to America, left part of their number, 
who were the progenitors of the present race inhabiting 
those islands \ and that they, at some subsequent period, 
either attempting to follow the tide of emigration to the 
east, or steering to the south, were by the north-east 
