and the results thus obtained agree so well that we cannot doubt their accuracy. The genealogies of the greater number of the Maori chiefs go back as far as those bold pioneers whose history I have related. Thomson, who has examined several, considers that the number of chiefs who have succeeded each other in every family since the colonization, may be estimated at about twenty. Taking the kings of England as a term of comparison, he attributes to the reign of each chief a duration of 223 years. These data took him back to the year 1419. The list of French kings would only give the year 1457.

On the other hand, in one of the songs preserved by Sir George Grey, there is an account of the history of the son of Hotunui, one of the colonizing chiefs of New Zealand, and of his immediate descendants. At the fourth generation a daughter was born, "from whom," the legend adds, “are descended in eleven generations all the principal chiefs now living of the tribe of Ngalipaoa." Taking thirty years for each generation, we find that the migration of Hotunui took place 450 years before the time when Sir George Grey received the document (about 1850), which carries us back to the year 1400.

Thus, these Maories, whom autochthonists regard as children of the soil, cannot have landed in New Zealand earlier than the beginning of the fifteenth century.

VII. I have hitherto only spoken of more or less voluntary migrations, such as might be induced by a spirit of adventure, civil troubles, or the authority of a priest despatching an excess of population in search of new countries. But in treating of Polynesia, we must, as I have already remarked, take accidents by sea into consideration. Several examples are known. It was in this manner that Toubouaï was peopled, which at the close of the last century, within an interval of a few years, received three canoes from different islands, one of which was Tahiti. All three had been carried away by a storm and driven ashore upon this island, which, till then, had been uninhabited.

Such, again, is the history of the chief Touwari and his companions, men, women, and children, discovered by Captain Beechey upon Byam-Martin Island, which they had begun to colonize. They had started from Anaa, an island situated two hundred and forty-five miles to the east of Tahiti, to go and pay homage to Pomare, but were surprised at Maïatea by the monsoon, which had come sooner than usual. Driven to the south-east into the midst of the Pomatou Islands, they landed at first on Barrow Island. Finding, however, no means of subsistence, they took to the sea again, and fell in with the island where they were found by the English navigator.

This example is perfect, since it realises all the circumstances indicated by the theory. It establishes the existence of regular relations between islands situated at great distances from each other; it proves one of those occurrences which must more than once have caused these bold navigators to wander from the usual route; it shows how a remote island was able to receive all the elements of a colony; it leaves no doubt as to the possibility of dispersion going on in an exactly opposite direction to that of the trade winds. We need only add that the passage from Maïatea to Barrow and Byam-Martin Islands is more than five hundred and sixty miles, and we shall understand without any difficulty how Polynesia was peopled by voluntary or accidental colonization.

VIII. There is one more circumstance which it is important to observe, and which is completely at variance with all autochthonist hypotheses, that, namely, on approaching the islands where they have been discovered by us, the Polyne.

sian found them uninhabited.

The songs, for which we are indebted to Sir George Grey, show that in New Zealand the greater number of the first emigrants met with no traces of a previous population. One only, named Manaïa, found upon a promontory aborigines of the country. This exception, from the very reason that it is unique, proves that this population could not have

been very numerous. It has slightly altered the type of the lowest grades of the Maories, to which it has been confined. The portrait published by Hamilton Smith, and one of the skulls in the possession of the Museum, inform us that these supposed aborigines were Papuans. It is evident that they had reached New Zealand in consequence of some mischance similar to those I have just mentioned, and had not even had time to multiply sufficiently to occupy the entire shores of the North Island.

The traditions of the Sandwich Islands furnish us with a fact of the same nature. They tell us that the first colonists coming from Tahiti found in these islands gods and spirits, who inhabited the caves and with whom they entered into alliance. It is evident that we have here a troglodyte people, whose importance the legend has been pleased to exaggerate, and whose origin it is not difficult to find. If Kadou, whose history has been preserved by Kotzebue, instead of leaving the Caroline Islands for the Radak Islands, had started from the latter, and if he had made almost the same passage in the same direction, he would have landed in the Sandwich Islands.

The mixture of Polynesian and Micronesian races at once explains the darkness of colour and want of purity in the features of the Hawaïans. Perhaps the same cause may account for the difference in features, manners, and industry which is presented by some tribes of the Low Archipelago.

Apart from these few and, as we see, very feeble exceptions, all the islands of Polynesia appear to have been uninhabited when the navigators from Boeroe or their descendants landed. This fact is distinctly proved by traditions in Kingsmill, Rarotonga, Mangarewa, the Toubouaï Islands, etc. Purity of race testifies that this was also the case with the Tonga, Samoa, and Marquesas Islands.

IX. Finally, the facts to which I have been obliged to confine myself are entirely opposed to the theories of autochthonists, and lead to the following conclusions: Polynesia, a region which, from its geographical conditions, seems at first

sight to be isolated from the rest of the world, has been peopled by means of voluntary migrations and accidental dispersion, passing from west to east, at least as a general rule. The Polynesians, coming from Malaya, and the Isle of Boeroe in particular, first established and settled themselves in the Archipelagos of Samoa and Tonga. Thence they invaded by degrees the maritime world open before them; they found, almost without an exception, that all the countries where they landed were uninhabited, and only on two or three occasions met with very small tribes of a more or less black type.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MIGRATIONS BY SEA.-MIGRATIONS IN AMERICA.

I. THE peopling of Polynesia and America is a problem which presents, if I may use the expression, inverse conditions. There is, in reality, no geographical difficulty in the latter. The proximity of the two continents at Behring Straits, the existence in this channel of the Saint Laurence islands, the largest of which is situated exactly half-way between the two opposite continents, the connection formed between Kamschatka and the peninsula of Alaska by the Aleutian Islands; the maritime habits of all these peoples; the presence of the Tchukchees on the two opposite shores; the voyages which they undertake from one continent to the other on simple matters of commerce, leave no doubt as to the facility with which the Asiatic races could pass into North America through the Polar Regions.

More to the south, the current of Tessan, the kouro-sivo, or black stream of the Japanese, opens a great route for navigators. This current has frequently cast floating bodies and abandoned junks upon the shores of California. Instances of this fact have been observed in our own time. It is impossible that they should not also have happened before the period of European discoveries. Asiatic maritime nations must at all times have been carried to America from all those places which are washed by the Black Stream.

The Equatorial current of the Atlantic opens a similar route leading from Africa to America, and there are some evidences, rare it is true, showing that wrecks have been carried in this direction. It is possible, therefore, that the same may also have happened to man.