440 
MISSIONARY TOUR 
In the language of the Sandwich Islands, we do not 
know that the word is ever used in the latter sense, 
and very rarely in the former. It is generally employed 
to denote any foreign country, and seems equivalent to 
the English word abroad, as applied to parts beyond 
the sea. But though this is the signification of the 
word among the Sandwich Islanders at the present 
time, it is probable that it was primarily used to desig¬ 
nate the whole of the southern group, or the principal 
island among them; and it may lead us to infer, either 
that Tahiti, and the Georgian and Society Islands, 
were all the foreign countries the Hawaiians w r ere 
acquainted with, or that they considered the Marque- 
sian Islands contiguous, and politically connected with 
them, and that these being the only foreign countries 
originally known to them, they have applied the term 
to every other part with which they have subsequently 
become acquainted. 
It is an opinion generally received, that the various 
tribes inhabiting the islands of the Pacific, have an 
Asiatic, and probably a Malayan origin. Applied to 
a great part of them, this opinion is supported by a 
variety of facts; but with respect to those groups with 
which we are acquainted, additional evidence appears 
necessary to confirm such a conclusion. 
The natives of the eastern part of New Holland, and 
the intertropical islands within thirty degrees east, 
including New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and the 
Figiis, appear to be one nation, and in all probability 
came originally from the Asiatic islands, to the north¬ 
ward, as their skin is black, and their hair woolly or 
crisped, like the inhabitants of the mountainous parts 
of several of the Asiatic islands. But the inhabitants 
