POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
49 
trade winds driven to the Sandwich Islands, whence they 
proceeded to the southern groups; or whether those who 
had traversed the north-west coast of America, sailed 
either from California or Mexico across the Pacific under 
the favouring influence of the regular easterly winds, peo¬ 
pled Easter Island, and continued under the steady 
easterly or trade-winds advancing westward till they 
met the tide of emigration flowing from the larger 
groups or islands, in which the Malays form the majority 
of the population—it is not now easy to determine. But 
a variety of facts connected with the past and present 
circumstances of the inhabitants of these countries, 
authorize the conclusion, that, either part of the pre¬ 
sent inhabitants of the South Sea Islands came origi¬ 
nally from America, or that tribes of the Polynesians 
have, at some remote period, found their way to the 
continent. 
The origin of the inhabitants of the Pacific is involved 
in great mystery, and the evidences are certainly strong¬ 
est in favour of their derivation from the Malayan tribes 
inhabiting the Asiatic Islands; but, allowing this to be 
their source, the means by which they have arrived at 
the remote and isolated stations they now occupy, ar^^ 
still inexplicable. If they w'ere peopled from the Ma¬ 
layan Islands, they must have possessed better vessels, 
and more accurate knowledge of navigation, than they 
now exhibit, to have made their way against the con¬ 
stant trade-winds prevailing within the tropics, and 
blowing regularly, with but transient and uncertain 
interruptions, from east to west. The nations at present 
inhabiting the islands of the Pacific, have undoubtedly 
been more extensively spread than they now are. In 
the most remote and solitary islands occasionally dis- 
II. 
H 
