our knowledge, there is no reason why many other canoes may not have shared a similar fate; and some few of many thousands, perhaps, may have drifted to the remotest islands of the Archipelago, and thus peopled them.'

Fourthly, the native traditions. These are scanty; but one of them relates to a man and woman arriving at Hawaii in a canoe bringing with them a hog, a dog, and a pair of fowls. These persons became the progenitors of the Hawaiian people. By another story prevalent among the inhabitants of Oahu, a number of persons arrived in a canoe from Tahiti, and perceiving that the Sandwich Islands were fertile, and were dwelt in only by gods and spirits, they asked and obtained permission to settle there. The early missionaries found the general opinion as to the origin of the Hawaiian race, to be either that their first parents had been created on the islands, or that the chiefs were descended from Akea the first king, who appears to have been a demigod; or the more popular view, that their ancestors had arrived in a canoe from Tahiti. Now the island of Tahiti, the principal of the Society group, lies on the ecliptic, in about lat. 18° S., and long. 150° W. It is consequently nearly forty degrees south of Hawaii, and rather to the westward of the latter group. There is nothing against the probability of an emigration from Tahiti; but the name tahiti itself is in the Georgian and Society Islands a verb; and it has also a signification in the language of the Sandwich Islands, being equivalent to the word. abroad, and is frequently employed to denote any foreign country. But, as in this country, some centuries ago, the word Spanish, though necessarily derived from the country Spain, was used with the meaning of outlandish

* Narrative of a Voyage,' &c., vol. i. 252.

TRADITIONS OF ORIGIN.

81

or foreign; so Ellis thinks that the name Tahiti was primarily employed to denote the whole of the southern group or its principal island; but it did not include the more contiguous group of the Marquesas.

According to native tradition frequent intercourse. existed between the various groups of islands, and the canoes then used were larger and of a better construction. In the Hawaiian Melés, or songs, the names of Nuubiva and Tahuata, two of the Marquesan islands,Upolu and Savaii, belonging to the Samoan group,—and Tahiti, with others in that neighbourhood, frequently occur; besides the names of headlands and towns in those islands. These songs also make allusions to voyages from Oahu and Kauai to islands far west.

As the traditionary lore of the Hawaiians is rapidly dying out, and printing is taking the place of memory, it is probable that little more of such transmitted information will be procured from native bard or eld. Mr. Ellis mentioned to me his conviction that if he returned to the Sandwich Islands he should not now obtain one-tenth of the myths or histories which he gathered there five-and-thirty years ago. The chapter, therefore, of popular palæontology must be a short one; and it may be closed with a question that arises in the mind when we consider the present state of this or any particular society of mankind, viz.: How has this people arrived at its present status? Has it been by progression or retrogression? Have they advanced from a somewhat Gorilla condition, such as still holds the Earthmen of Africa; or have degrading influences been at work and marred gradually the goodly image which the Creator formed? Are we to hold with Monboddo, the Vestiges,' and Darwin; or, with the more glowing and regretful belief of South, that Aristotle was but the ruin of an

G

in turns.

Adam, and Athens only the rudiments of Eden?' In this world of flux and change it is probable that the light shines on and is withdrawn from different nations Those who love light and use it well may be privileged to keep their faces turned towards it, and follow it wheresoever it goes. It does not appear,' says Humboldt, to belong to the destinies of the human race that all portions of it should suffer eclipse or obscuration at the same time. A preserving principle maintains the ever-living process of the progress of reason." And the Christian philosopher has something to add to this, which seems a somewhat cold estimate of the human destiny. We may believe that the lamp of religious truth emits rays of warmth as well as of light; and that a nation will receive a blessing from on high and that a shield will be extended over her head whilst she diligently trims that lamp and carries it forth in zeal and love to enlighten other nations and the isles that sit in darkness.

*Cosmos.' (Sabine), ii. 232.

CHAPTER VI.

EARLY ISLAND

EARL

DISCOVERIES-NATIVE

FIRST ARRIVAL.

HISTORY-COOK'S

ARLY in the sixteenth century the pioneers of navigation from Portugal, Spain, and Genoa had burst into the great Pacific Ocean. Magellan entered the Pacific in 1520, and discovered the Marianas, the Philippines, and some smaller islands. Gaetano discovered one of the Sandwich Islands in 1542; and following him, Quiros found Tahiti and the New Hebrides. Sea voyages in the Pacific multiplied, but that sea long continued the exclusive theatre of the enterprises of the Spaniards and Portuguese. Its hydrography was, however, unfixed and imperfect, and, as Humboldt remarks, the islands by which it was studded, from want of exact astronomical determination of position, strayed to and fro on the map, like floating islands. That great observer says: 'It has been asked, how it was possible for Spanish vessels since the sixteenth century to cross the great ocean from the western coast of the New Continent to the Philippine Islands without discovering the isles with which that vast sea basin is strewed?' He answers the question by the small number of voyages made; one ship went and returned between New Spain and Manilla during the year; scarcely more between the latter place and Lima; by the difficulties of navigation at a period

when the use of lunar distances and chronometers was unknown to navigators; and by the necessity felt of following an ascertained track, from which if they deviated, they feared falling in with shallows and shoals. He enumerates the discoveries made by the Spaniards. in the great ocean, and says that the names of Viscayno, Mendána, Quiros, and Sarmiento, undoubtedly deserve a place beside the names of the most illustrious navigators of the eighteenth century. In 1542,' he says, 'Gaetano had already found several scattered islands not far from the group of Sandwich Islands; and it cannot be called in question that even this last group was known to the Spaniards for more than a century before the voyage of Cook for the island of Mesa indicated on an old chart of the galleon of Acapulco is the same with the island of Owhyhee, which contains the high mountain of The Table or Mouna Roa.'* Christian missionaries, too, were pressing forward into the newly discovered tropical lands of America: one or more possibly reached Hawaii. Ellis found a tradition. preserved there among the people, and he heard it from them in three different places, that in the reign of Kahoukapu, a priest (Kahuna) arrived in Hawaii from a foreign country. He was a white man, having the name of Paao, and he brought with him two idols or gods, one of which was large and the other small. These were adopted by the nations, admitted into the national pantheon, and were worshipped according to the direction of Paao; the temple called Mokini, in the district of Pauepu, near the north point of the island, was built for them, as tradition states by a priest, who afterwards became a powerful man in the nation.

'Polit. Essay on New Spain.'