124 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
described as a people of pleasing and courteous 
deportment, and gentle expression of countenance, 
their features resembling those of Europeans; their 
complexion was of a light olive, and their skins 
tataued like those of the South Sea Islanders.* 
The origin of the inhabitants of the Pacific is 
involved in great mystery, and the evidences are 
certainly strongest 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, are still 
inexplicable. If they were peopled from the 
Malayan Islands, they must have possessed better 
vessels, and more accurate knowledge of naviga¬ 
tion, than they now exhibit, to have made their 
way against the constant 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 
discovered in recent years, such as Pitcairn's, on 
which the mutineers of the Bounty settled, and on 
Fanning’s Island near Christmas Island, midway 
between the Society and Sandwich Islands, 
although now desolate, relics of former inhabit¬ 
ants have been found. Pavements of floors, 
foundations of houses, and stone entrances, have 
been discovered; and stone adzes or hatchets have 
been found at some distance from the surface, 
exactly resembling those in use among the people 
of the North and South Pacific at the time of their 
discovery. These facts prove that the nations 
* Pritchard's Physical Hist, of Mankind, vol. ii. p. 394. 
