1839 - Lang, John Dunmore. New Zealand in 1839: or Four Letters to the Right Hon. Earl Durham on the Colonization of that Island. - Letter III. On the Prospect which New Zealand Affords for the Establishment of a British Colony, p 47-70

       
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  1839 - Lang, John Dunmore. New Zealand in 1839: or Four Letters to the Right Hon. Earl Durham on the Colonization of that Island. - Letter III. On the Prospect which New Zealand Affords for the Establishment of a British Colony, p 47-70
 
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LETTER III. ON THE PROSPECT WHICH NEW ZEALAND AFFORDS FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A BRITISH COLONY.

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LETTER III.

ON THE PROSPECT WHICH NEW ZEALAND AFFORDS FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A BRITISH COLONY.

London, June, -- 1839.

MY LORD,

It is one of the beautiful arrangements of that beneficent providence which governs the world, that the interest and the duty, both of individuals and of nations, are generally conjoined; insomuch that in discharging the one, the other is materially advanced. It is the bounden duty of the British Government, for example, to interfere at the present moment for the protection and preservation of the natives of New Zealand by the establishment of a British Colony, founded and conducted on equitable and christian principles, on their coasts. In what way such an undertaking would promote British interests in the tenderest point, and prove highly conducive to the national welfare, I shall now demonstrate.

The group of islands known under the general name of New Zealand is situated a little to the westward of the 180th degree of E. or W. longitude, and between the 34th and 48th parallels of S. latitude; extending from north to south upwards of eight hundred geographical miles, with an average breadth of upwards of one hundred miles, and containing an extent of surface equal to that of the British Islands. The coast line, following the various

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indentations of the land, extends considerably upwards of three thousand miles, and probably comprises a greater number of eligible harbours, bays, and roadsteads, than is to be found along an equal extent of coast in any other part of the world. In the winter season--from May to September inclusive -- these bays are the resort of the Black or Right Whale; and at a moderate distance from the land, the Sperm Whale is found, occasionally in vast herds, in the surrounding ocean. Indeed, it is a fact worthy of special notice, as indicative of the superior eligibility of New Zealand as a whaling station, that the whale caught on the New Zealand ground yields a third more oil than an animal of the same size and species caught in any other part of the world. I am indebted for this fact to a whaling captain of great experience in the South Sea fisheries, and of undoubted veracity.

It cannot be denied, however, that this branch of trade, so peculiarly important to a maritime nation, as a grand nursery for seamen, is fast passing out of the hands of Great Britain and her colonies. Of the whalers at present on the coast of New Zealand, about one hundred are American, thirty British, and thirty French. The French vessels, most of which belong to a company of naturalized Swiss merchants at Havre de Grace, are beyond all comparison the finest and the best equipped in the trade; their crews are also the most orderly and the best conducted. They are consequently the most persevering and the most successful; the Swiss Company having actually realized not less than thirty-five per cent, on their capital invested, according to the information I received from a gentleman at the Bay of Islands, who had abundant means of ascertaining the fact.

Everything that enlightened policy could dictate has in the meantime been done by the French Government to extend and to render popular this important branch of the

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national industry. A bounty, amounting to about 4l. per ton, is allowed in France on all whale-oil procured by French whalers; and every encouragement is judiciously held out to those citizens of the United States, who are at all acquainted with the whale fishery, to settle in the kingdom. A considerable number of the French whaling vessels have hitherto been commanded by naturalized Americans; one of whom, so early as the year 1834, was made a chevalier of the legion of honour by Louis Philippe, as a reward for his eminent services in that capacity, and as an inducement to his enterprising countrymen to become citizens of France. Nay, the attentions of their truly paternal Government follow the French whalers even to the distant Pacific; where a frigate and two other French ships of war have recently been cruising for their protection, as well as to conciliate the natives of the different islands they visit. In short, Great Britain has seldom had a more formidable rival on her own element and in her own peculiar walk, than she now has in the Southern Pacific under the flag of the citizen king.

Whether the French have any ulterior views--I mean in regard to the formation of a permanent settlement either in New Zealand or in some of the other islands of the Pacific, --I cannot tell: the general impression, however, both in New South Wales and in New Zealand, is, that they have; and that impression seems by no means unwarranted from various circumstances which it is unnecessary to particularize. Wishing, from my heart, the peace and prosperity of the French nation, and the extension of its commerce tenfold, I should nevertheless, for the reason I have already stated, consider the formation of a French Colony in the South Seas a real calamity to the Southern Hemisphere, as presenting a serious obstacle to the progress and improvement of the human race.

Whalers of all nations will unquestionably exert a

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demoralizing influence on the uncivilized and heathen tribes with which they come in contact; but I am sorry to be obliged to add, on the authority of an intelligent countryman of my own in New Zealand, whose means of information are very extensive, that of the three nations engaged most extensively in the Southern Fisheries--the British, the French, and the Americans--the influence of our own sailors on the New Zealanders is the most demoralizing: they are the most intemperate, the most disorderly, and the most abandoned. And as the trade is gradually becoming less and less profitable than it has hitherto been to the British and Colonial merchant, from this very circumstance, the probability is that, if vigorous measures are not speedily taken to prevent it, it will ere long be in great measure, if not wholly, engrossed by foreigners.

The French whalers are employed chiefly, though not exclusively, in the pursuit of the black whale; the British and American whalers being partly engaged in the black and partly in the sperm whale fishery. Of the extent to which both branches of the trade are pursued by the Americans, some idea may be formed from the following account of the number of barrels of sperm and black whale oil, which had arrived in the United States, during the following years, copied from the New York Express of January, 1839: --

Years. Brls. Sperm. Brls. Black.
1834 129,824 122,292
1835 175,130 125,100
1836 131,921 133,050
1837 182,567 215,120
1838 129,400 228,710

In short, there is reason to fear that unless the requisite preventive measures are speedily taken, this most important branch of maritime industry will ere long be wrested entirely out of the hands of Great Britain and her colonies by the Americans and the French.

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It appears to me, however, that if a British Colony were established on right principles in New Zealand, it might not only be made conducive in the highest degree to the protection of the natives from the demoralizing influence of whalers of all nations, but would lead to the restoration to Great Britain and her colonies of their proper share in this branch of industry. For if a few hundred families of the herring and whale fishing population of the northern parts of England, of the north and west of Scotland, and of the Orkney and Shetland Isles, were to be settled as colonists in New Zealand, and British capital employed, even to a very moderate amount, through a whaling company in London, to afford them employment in the Southern Fisheries, they would very soon get the whole of the black whale fishery of the island into their hands, and be able eventually to compete successfully with the Americans in the sperm whale fishery also, by being always in the immediate vicinity of the whaling ground. Of the population I allude to, thousands have of late years been reduced to penury from the failure of the Northern Fisheries. As colonists in New Zealand, however, they would immediately find a splendid field for their industry and no fear of want.

As an illustration of the extent to which the black whale fishery on the coasts of New Zealand is at present carried on from the colony of New South Wales, I am enabled to state, from information obtained incidentally on my voyage home, that during the past year a single mercantile house in Sydney imported into that colony, from New Zealand, not less than seventy-one tons of whalebone, an article which generally sells for 145l. per ton in the London market. Whalebone is procured exclusively from the black whale, of which it constitutes a sort of fringe along the jaws, the animal having no teeth, like the spermaceti whale. Now as each whale affords about five hundred weight of bone, there must have been not fewer than 284

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whales killed by the parties belonging to the mercantile house I refer to, to yield the quantity of bone procured by that one house. Still, however, the black whale fishery on the coasts of New Zealand has been by no means a gainful speculation generally for the New South Wales merchants; the field of operation being not only very distant, and the outfit proportionally expensive, but the merchant being obliged to depend for the issue of his stores and the general success of his speculation on whatever runaway sailors he can pick up in the port of Sydney, as the European natives of New South Wales have generally no disposition to go to sea. In short, New Zealand and not New South Wales is the proper place for the establishment of a colonial population to engage vigorously in the whale fishery of the Southern Pacific; and if a British colonial population of virtuous habits, and predisposed and accustomed to that particular branch of industry, were settled along the coasts of that island, they would infallibly and at no distant period engross the whole of the trade. 1

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Besides, a virtuous European community of the kind I have mentioned, settled on the coasts of New Zealand, with their ministers and schoolmasters and missionaries to the heathen, would infallibly exert a powerful moral influence on the surrounding natives; of whom many would speedily join them in their perilous employment--manning their boats and sharing their spoils. The New Zealanders are decidedly a maritime people. They are fond of the sea, and make excellent sailors, and they only require virtuous and industrious Europeans to reside among them to render their services in this way most advantageous to themselves and to the British empire. 2

If a few hundred families of the class I have mentioned were settled in suitable localities along the coasts of New Zealand--as for instance, at the Bay of Islands, the River Thames, Port Nicholson, and Queen Charlotte's Sound in Cook's Straits, Dusky Bay, &c. --having small patches of ground for cultivation attached to their houses, they would soon realize a degree of comfort and independence which they could never hope to attain in the mother country. All

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the bays and roadsteads of the island abound with excellent fish of various kinds, and I have been informed by an intelligent person who knows the country well, that there is a bank somewhere to the northward of the East Cape, on which the natives procure the largest and finest cod in the world. Even the shell-fish of the island afford an agreeable article of food to the New Zealanders. Cockles are very abundant and of excellent quality, and the muscles, which constitute a regular New Zealand dish, are much better flavoured than ours; the shell is considerably broader and of more delicate texture.

I trust, therefore, it will appear evident to your Lordship that if New Zealand is to be colonized at all, its peculiar adaptation for the establishment of a whale fishery, or rather for being the head quarters of the South Sea fisheries, ought to be regarded as a subject of primary consideration; as the prosecution of that branch of industry by a maritime population emigrating from the mother country, would not only prove an immediate and inexhaustible source of wealth to the colony, but would afford the best means of counteracting the demoralizing influence of the whalers of all nations that now visit the coast, and of promoting in the highest degree the civilization and Christianization of the natives.

The climate of New Zealand is decidedly one of the finest in the world--like that of Italy and the South of France towards the north, and like that of England and the South of Scotland towards the south; the winter, however, being milder than that of Great Britain. I was particularly struck with the glow of health exhibited on the cheeks of the children of Europeans at the Bay of Islands, compared with the pale faces of children of the same age at Sydney, in much the same latitude. It was quite remarkable. At all events the climate of New Zealand is undeniably superior to that of New South

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Wales and Van Dieman's Land in one most important particular, viz., in being free from droughts and hot winds; its insular character, its chain of lofty mountains running from north to south along the whole extent of the islands, and its distance from any large continent, ensuring it a constant and copious supply of rain. Indeed this most favourable circumstance renders New Zealand decidedly more eligible for the settlement of industrious families of the humbler classes, intending to earn their subsistence by the cultivation of the soil, than either of these two great pastoral colonies; for there has never yet been a crop lost in New Zealand from want of rain, which, I am sorry to say, is not the case in New South Wales.

Whether New Zealand will ever come into extensive competition with the Australian Colonies, as a pastoral country, may admit of question. I have already mentioned that ten bales of wool of superior quality had recently been forwarded to Sydney, where it sold at a high price, from a missionary estate in the northern division of the northern island. There has also been a quantity of equally superior quality sent up to Sydney lately from the island of Manna, in Cook's Straits; and it cannot be denied that the abundance of water in New Zealand, which is often rather scarce in New South Wales, affords superior facilities for getting up the wool for the foreign market. On the other hand, the dryness of the Australian climate is unquestionably favourable both for the constitution of the sheep and the growth and texture of the wool.

At all events, it is to the rearing of sheep and cattle, and the growth of fine wool, that persons of moderate capital emigrating to New Zealand must principally direct their attention. It would be absurd to act otherwise. To combine with these pursuits the cultivation of the soil, or the production of grain to a much greater extent than it is pursued in New South Wales, would doubtless be advisable;

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but to neglect those peculiar means of advancement which have raised the Australian colonies to their present condition of unexampled prosperity and importance, especially in a country in which a vast extent of unoccupied pasture land proclaims its peculiar adaptation for the rearing of sheep and cattle, would be irrational in the extreme. Besides, agricultural stock of all kinds could be imported into New Zealand, both from New South Wales and from Van Dieman's Land, at a lesser expense even than into Southern Australia; the westerly winds that prevail in these regions for so large a portion of the year rendering a voyage to the eastward of much easier accomplishment than one to the westward.

The northern parts of the northern island are certainly less adapted for sheep and cattle than the open pastoral country in the vicinity of Cook's Straits. Towards the north the country is more covered with timber and more moist; and the improvable land, instead of being coated over with good pasture, in its natural state, as is the case generally in New South Wales, is for the most part overgrown with fern. The fern, however, never grows on bad land in New Zealand, and the quality of the soil is generally indicated by the size and strength of the fern; inferior land producing only a stunted and puny vegetation. When sown with English grasses, the New Zealand fern-land produces excellent pasture. The English clover in particular grows luxuriantly.

The localities in which an agricultural population could be settled in the first instance with greatest facility, and with the best prospect of success, are, the banks of the River Thames on the east coast, and those of the Hokianga, Kaiparra, and Manukau rivers on the west. On these rivers, which are all navigable for vessels of considerable burden, and especially for steam-boats, there is a vast extent of alluvial land of the first quality, which would

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produce in the greatest abundance all the roots, fruits, vegetables, and grains of Europe, including wheat, maize, and potatoes, tobacco, the olive, and the vine. The potatoes of New Zealand are proverbially excellent, I mean in New South Wales; they are cultivated most successfully by the natives, without manure of any kind; they come to maturity in fourteen weeks, and two crops of them are obtained in the year. Wheat yields at the rate of forty bushels per acre, and I have seen maize grown by the natives with very indifferent culture near the Bay of Islands, equal to any in New South Wales. In short, all the necessaries of life and many of its luxuries could be raised with very moderate industry by an agricultural population in all the localities I have enumerated.

Of these localities the River Thames would certainly be the fittest for the capital of a British Colony, both for the extent of eligible land in that part of the island, and for the superior facilities which it presents for communication, both with its east and west coasts. A canal of not more than three quarters of a mile in length, across a neck of low land between two navigable rivers flowing in opposite directions, would establish a water communication in that part of the island from sea to sea; the natives of the east coast having formerly been in the habit of ascending the Thames in their large war canoes, dragging them across the neck or isthmus, and then launching them on the Manukau River, which is navigable for sixty miles from the west coast. That river, moreover, is, of all the three western rivers I have mentioned, the most practicable at all times for large vessels, and there is much superior land on its banks. The Hokianga river is in like manner right across from the Bay of Islands; the distance overland from Waimate, at the head of the Kidi-kidi river, which empties itself into that bay, being only twenty-five or thirty miles. About four miles from Waimate is the Lake Maipere, twelve

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miles in length by eight in breadth, having much arable land of superior quality on its banks. The Hokianga is navigable for large vessels for eighty miles from its mouth, and for boats twenty or thirty miles farther. The mouth of the Kaiparra river, which is somewhat of a similar character, is about sixty miles to the southward; but the head of it is about the same distance from the Bay of Islands as the Hokianga. In short, the whole of this part of New Zealand is admirably fitted by nature for the settlement of a British colony, or rather for becoming the cradle of a great agricultural, maritime, and commercial nation; and if large bodies of free emigrants, with their ministers and schoolmasters, and missionaries to the heathen, were settled under a regular Government in each of the important localities I have enumerated, I have no doubt that their influence on the natives would be salutary in the highest degree, and that both New Zealanders and Europeans would coalesce into one christian and virtuous people in a comparatively short period of time. There are not a few instances already of Europeans forming connections with native women, which have afterwards been rendered reputable and permanent by marriage; and the offspring of such marriages will undoubtedly constitute a very fine race of men. In a native village on the banks of the Kauakaua river, I saw a daughter of the Chevalier Dillon, the discoverer of the reliques of La Perouse, by a native female. She was apparently about eleven or twelve years of age, and in point of form and feature had a most interesting appearance. She was barefooted and bareheaded, however, like the other natives of the village, and her only garment was a New Zealand mat.

On the banks of all the New Zealand rivers I have enumerated, there are splendid forests of native timber, and there is already a considerable trade carried on in the island, in the cutting of that timber for exportation. At the time I was in the Bay of Islands in January and February last,

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there were not fewer than four large vessels loading timber at Hokianga--one for London, one for Launceston, in Van Dieman's Land, one for Adelaide, in Southern Australia, and one for Port Phillip, in New South Wales. It is singular indeed, that all these three colonies should thus have to send for timber to New Zealand. Such, however, is the fact.

Besides the pine, there are several species of hard wood in New Zealand that are capable of being turned to account. Of the pine there are five or six varieties that are used for various purposes; but the most valuable is the koudi pine-- a species of wood resembling the timber of the Baltic, to which it is preferred by competent judges, and admirably adapted, from its strength and straightness, for spars for ships. From the koudi pine, when growing, there exudes a gum, which may be gathered in considerable quantities on the ground around the tree. This gum has recently been sold in some quantity, and at the rate of 18l. per ton, to the Americans, who manufacture it into varnish, which I believe is sold in the United States under the name of copal varnish.

Of the natural productions of New Zealand the most remarkable is the phormium tenax, or New Zealand flax. This valuable plant resembles in appearance the common flag. It affects moist situations, but is by no means fastidious as to the quality of the soil in other respects. Whether it would improve by cultivation I do not know, but it is found in sufficient quantity in its wild state to afford constant and remunerating employment to a large European population. At present it is prepared exclusively by the native women, who merely scrape off the exterior parts of the leaf with muscle shells, and then form the filaments which remain, and which constitute the flax of commerce, into bundles. When intending to use it themselves for the manufacture of their native mats they twist it into yarn,

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with their fingers, and then steep the bundles or hanks of yarn for some time in running water to render it soft and pliant. They have no knowledge of the loom, but they display considerable ingenuity in the manufacture of their mats, which are all knit, or woven like net-work, with the hand, without implements of any kind. 3 The natives, however, generally prefer English blankets to their own mats; chiefly, I believe, because they are foreign, and imply that they have cost the wearer something besides mere manual labour, but partly also because they find them warmer in winter. They have an exceedingly mean appearance, however, when compared with the native mat, which often suggests the idea of an ancient Greek or Roman. The borders of the native mats, which are often really elegant, are chiefly manufactured by the natives of the East Cape and its vicinity; and it is worthy of remark that the arabesque tracery they sometimes exhibit is exactly the same as the celebrated traveller, Baron Humboldt, found on the walls of the temple of the Sun, at Mitla, in Mexico, and as is still observable on the ancient Etruscan vases, that are occasionally dug up in the environs of Rome. 4

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The New Zealand flax is manufactured in Sydney into whaling gear, for which, I believe, it is peculiarly well adapted. It makes excellent standing rigging for vessels,



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and has recently been manufactured into canvass for ships' sails. It could be produced in New Zealand to any extent.



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It is evident, therefore, that that island will eventually be the Baltic of the Southern Hemisphere, supplying the great desiderata of commerce--timber, and flax--and affording support and employment to a numerous and industrious



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European population. Iron ore of superior quality abounds in the island, and coal is said to have been found at the surface in Cook's Straits. There are indications of copper in the mountains of the interior; and on White's Island, on



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the east coast, which is still under volcanic agency, sulphur can be procured in great quantity. Limestone abounds in the interior, and excellent marble.



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In one word, whether we regard the situation, the soil, the climate, or the natural productions and inhabitants of the country, I am confident, my Lord, there never has been a more favourable locality for the settlement of a



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British colony than the New Zealand group of islands at this moment affords.

It may be supposed, indeed, that in a country of which the natives have so long been represented in Europe as



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ferocious cannibals, Europeans would run considerable risk in attempting to form a permanent settlement. But the circumstance of there being at present a very considerable European population living in perfect security in various



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parts of the island, is a sufficient answer to such an objection. Cannibalism has entirely disappeared in the neighbourhood of all the European settlements; and in their native wars,



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the New Zealanders uniformly respect the Europeans who are settled among them, unless the latter, which, indeed is seldom the case, take part with one or other of the hostile tribes.

I have the honour to be,
MY LORD, &c. &c.



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1   The black whale occasionally visits the bays of New South Wales, but in comparatively small numbers. They, are more numerous along the coasts of Van Dieman's Land. On the south coast of New Holland, however, towards the western extremity of the land, they are still more numerous; and the Americans, who seem in reference to their trading abilities to have inherited all the eyes of Argus, are evidently fully alive to the fact; there being at present not fewer than sixty American whalers on that part of the coast of the Australian continent. The splendid harbour of King George's Sound, near Cape Leeuwin, in the colony of Swan River, would also form an excellent whaling station of the kind I have proposed for New Zealand; I mean for the settlement of such a population as the mother country could easily spare, for the pursuit of the black whale fishery along the southern shores of New Holland. I happened to touch at King George's Sound on my way to New South Wales, in the month of November, 1837, and can speak from personal observation of the capabilities of the place as a whaling station. I am confident, therefore, that if one or two hundred families of the herring and whale fishing population of the North of England or Scotland were settled in that locality, with a suitable establishment of whale boats, whaling gear, &c, and one or two small vessels to carry the boats' crews supplies when out in the whaling season along the coast, and to bring back their oil to the Sound, under the direction of some intelligent and active person as the agent of a company at home, the laggard colony of Swan River would be greatly benefited, and the emigrants would be not less benefited themselves, while I am sure the company would reap a handsome return for their outlaid capital.
2   I was much gratified at hearing the New Zealand coxswain of an English boat, in which two of my fellow-passengers per the Roslyn Castle and myself were rowed across the Bay of Islands on a beautiful moonlight night, by four of his countrymen, calling out to them in good English, and scarcely with a foreign accent, "Pull away, my lads," "Stand to it, my boys." The New Zealanders, in reply, struck up their native boat-song in a sort of recitative, of which the chorus, like that of the Canadian boat song, is "Tohi, Tohi," or Row, brothers, row.
3   I examined the work-basket of a native woman, a slave from the southern regions of the island, whom I saw at work on a mat for her master near the Wai Tangi or Cataract River. It contained a considerable variety of various coloured yarns, and was not unlike the repertory of an English lady, when engaged in working a vase stand or other article of party coloured worsted manufacture. The Wai Tangi, or "noisy water," empties itself into the Bay of Islands. It has obtained its most appropriate native name from a large waterfall at the head of the navigation -- the finest for a water-mill I have ever seen in the Southern Hemisphere. I have no doubt it will be used for that purpose ere long, and as the Bay of Islands is the common reservoir of a number of navigable streams, a grist-mill in that locality might grind corn for a very considerable extent of agricultural country easily accessible by water.
4   I have endeavoured, in a work published in London, in the year 1834, entitled "View of the origin and migrations of the Polynesian Nation; demonstrating their ancient discovery and progressive settlement of the continent of America;" to prove from this and a great variety of similar coincidences -- in manners and customs; in architectural remains; in language; and in the whole frame-work of society --that America was originally peopled from the South Sea Islands, across the broadest part of the Pacific, and that both the Indo-Americans and Polynesians derived their origin and civilization, such as it is or rather was, from the same source and people as the ancient Egyptians and Etruscans; viz. from the earliest of the postdiluvian nations. Of the correctness of this hypothesis I have found a thousand confirmatory proofs, in addition to the chain of evidence contained in the work I refer to, from subsequent investigation. An abstract of that work was published in the Royal Geographical Society's Journal for the year 1834 or 1835; but no opinion was pronounced on my hypothesis as to the original discovery and settlement of America, although the evidence bearing upon that point was acknowledged to be remarkable in a high degree. The portion of the periodical press of the day, however, by which the work was noticed, generally ridiculed the idea without condescending to examine it; but I am happy to state that a much more competent witness on such a subject than most of the writers for the London periodicals, I mean Mr. Williams, the well-known and justly celebrated missionary who has recently returned after his visit to England to the South Sea Islands, has not only declared himself strongly in favour of my hypothesis, but, what is much more unaccountable, has actually given it as his own, without any acknowledgment whatever. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Williams frequently, and of attending the public meetings to which he detailed his most interesting missionary notices of the South Sea Islands, during his late residence in Sydney, on his return to these islands; but having no leisure for the perusal of his work before my own departure from New South Wales, I took the opportunity of reading it on my voyage to England, and was more than astonished to find it contained an unacknowledged abridgment of a work of 250 pages of my own, containing an elaborate argument on the origin of the South Sea Islanders, and a chain of evidence establishing the fact of their having been the first discoverers and inhabitants of America.

The portion of Mr. Williams' work in which this abridgment of my treatise is contained, occupies about ten or twelve pages, and extends from page 503 to page 514 of his book. It commences with a deduction of the Asiatic origin of the Polynesians, from the same facts and circumstances as those previously enumerated in my treatise: viz, their physical conformation; their general character; their Malay features; the affinity of the institutions of caste and tabu to similar institutions in the East; the similarity of customs in regard to the treatment of women, particularly their being forbidden to eat certain articles of food, or to eat in the presence of men; their inhuman conduct to the sick; their immolation of widows at the funerals of their husbands, and a great number of games and other usages. In regard to the affinity of language, on which I had entered at considerable length and laid much stress, Mr. Williams observes, "Of this I will furnish a few examples;" and he accordingly gives the following
  EXAMPLES:  
English. Rarotonga. Malay.
The eye. Mata. Mata.
Food. Manga. Mangan
Dead. Mate. Mate.
A bird. Manu. Manu.
Fish. Ika. Ika.
Water. Vai. Vai.

But every one of these examples, with various others, which Mr. Williams has not quoted, had been given long before in my book, in the very order too in which Mr. W. quotes them, as will be abundantly evident to the reader from the following extract from pages 21 and 22 of my treatise above-mentioned: --

"The following is a specimen of the affinity subsisting between the Polynesian dialects, and those of the Indian Archipelago:--
English. Polynesian. Malay.
The eye. Mata (universally). Mata (universally).
To eat. Maa (strong guttural). Macan (Javanese, Mangan).
To kill. Matte. Matte.
A bird. Manu. Manu (Prince's Island, Manuck.)
Fish. Ika. Ika (Javanese, Iwa).
  [Here are two words, which Mr. W. has not given. ]  
Water. Wai or Vai. Vai (Amboynese)."

Mr. Williams then proceeds to notice and refute three objections to the theory of the Asiatic origin of the South Sea Islanders; and they are precisely the same objections as I had previously noticed and refuted in precisely the same way: viz.

1. --The great distance of some of the islands from the Asiatic Continent. In meeting this objection, Mr. Williams points out, as I had already done, the intermediate islands that would render the ocean voyage either to the Sandwich Islands or New Zealand comparatively short, and refers, as I had also done, to the frequent drifting of canoes, full of natives, far from their native isles.

2. --The prevalence of the easterly or trade winds. This objection I had met by references to the testimony of La Perouse and Captain Hunter, R. N., afterwards Governor of New South Wales, in regard to the frequency of westerly gales in low latitudes in the Pacific Ocean, and also to my own experience and observation in intertropical regions. Mr. Williams meets it by detailing a voyage of his own of 1600 miles, due east, with a fair wind all the way, from the Samoa or Navigators' Islands to Tahiti.

3. --Inability of the Malays to perform long voyages. This objection I had answered by certain long quotations from Marsden's History of Sumatra and Captain King's Survey of the North and West Coasts of Australia; shewing the early and high civilization of the Malays and their ancient maritime character. Now it is singular enough that Mr. Williams should have stumbled upon these very quotations also, when pursuing the same line of argument. It is unnecessary, however, to give them a third time.

"Thus, I think," continues Mr. Williams, "every difficulty is removed, and that we need not have recourse to the theory, advocated by some writers, and countenanced, to a certain extent, by Mr. Ellis, that the Polynesian Islanders came from South America. I would far rather say, provided their physical conformation, the structure of their language, and other circumstances, established the identity of the Polynesians and the Aborigines of America, that the latter reached that continent through the isles of the Pacific. This, however, is a topic upon which, although interesting, I cannot enter; but so convinced am I of the practicability of performing a voyage from Sumatra to Tahiti in one of the large native canoes, that if an object of sufficient magnitude could be accomplished by it, I should feel no hesitation in undertaking the task."--Narrative of Missionary Enterprise, &c. page 512.

Having read my book, as he evidently must have done to have borrowed so much of it, Mr. Williams could not be ignorant that I had pursued the singularly interesting argument, which he merely glances at in the passage in Italics, and fully established the theory of the Polynesian origin of the Indo-Americans, which he mentions with so much approbation in that passage--or rather gives indirectly as his own. Regarding the discovery of the complete identity of the Indo-Chinese, Malayan, Polynesian, and Indo-American nations, and of the mode in which the American Continent was originally reached in some remote age (by a few solitary individuals of that large portion of the great family of man), as one of the most interesting literary discoveries of the present age, I cannot allow it to be appropriated in this manner, even by Mr. Williams. Having already gained a species of immortality in the nobler field of missionary enterprise, Mr. W. had no need to array himself in borrowed plumes, by appropriating the labours of others in the inferior field of literary and antiquarian research; for which indeed his own previous education, his active habits, and his more important employments necessarily unfitted him. Of the correctness of my hypothesis, and of its entire accordance with the facts on which it rests, Mr. Williams is doubtless one of the most competent judges living, and I am happy to possess his valuable testimony and opinion on the subject; but it is no disparagement to Mr. W. to say, that he could neither have elaborated nor established that hypothesis himself.

In my work on the Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian nation, I had confined myself entirely to the Polynesians, properly so called, and had not attempted in any way to enquire into the origin and migrations of the other race that inhabits some of the Western Islands of the Pacific, as well as the continent of New Holland, I mean the Papuan, or Oceanic, negroes. I shall take the liberty to quote the following passage on the subject from pages 157-159 of my treatise:--

"I have purposely refrained from saying any thing, in the course of the preceding pages, of the latter of these numerous tribes of men, although it is well known that they not only constitute the Aborigines of New Holland, Van Dieman's Land, and New Guinea, but are found in considerable numbers, mixed occasionally with the lighter-coloured Polynesians, in several of the groups of islands to the westward, as in New Caledonia, the Mallicolo Islands, the New Hebrides, &c; as well as in several of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, as in Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, &c; in the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal; and even in the interior of Continental India, as at Mongheir. I have preserved this silence, partly from unwillingness to involve in additional perplexity a subject already sufficiently extensive, by the introduction of a new and foreign element, but more especially from the limited nature of our acquaintance with the languages, and from our entire ignorance of the origin, of the Papuan race. I am not without hopes, however, that the literary apparatus that has recently been set up and put in active operation on the eastern shores of New Holland, will in due time serve to clear away a portion at least of the 'clouds and darkness' that still 'rest upon' this mysterious chapter of the history of man."

Now it is singular enough that even this passage of my work should have been reproduced, in an abridged form, by Mr. Williams; the following being Mr. W.'s introductory remarks to a similar view, which he gives, of the diffusion of the Papuan or Oceanic Negro race.

"I fear that my remarks upon the origin of the Polynesian negroes will not be equally satisfactory with those that relate to the other race. This, indeed, is a dark and mysterious chapter in the history of man."

In short, having the highest respect and esteem for Mr. Williams, as a devoted and truly apostolic missionary, I cannot but express the sincere regret I have felt at observing, in the instance above detailed, that he has not yet learned to its full extent, or in all its more evident bearings, the christian principle of giving every one his own.

To enable the reader who may not have leisure for such investigations to form some idea of the sort of evidence on which the hypothesis of the Polynesian origin of the Indo-Americans is based, I shall mention a few particulars in which the identity of the two races is evident and unquestionable; premising that while the celebrated Baron Humboldt distinctly states it as his opinion, that the whole aboriginal inhabitants of America, with the single exception of the Esquimaux, must have had the same common origin, Dr. Robertson, the historian, observes, that in their manners and customs, and in the whole character and aspect of the species of civilization to which certain of their nations had attained on the European discovery of the American Continent, the Indo-Americans were altogether unlike any portion of the human race previously known.

1. --In reference to language; the late distinguished oriental scholar, Dr. Leyden, regards it as a remarkable peculiarity of the Indo-Chinese nations, distinguishing them from all the other great families of nations to the westward, whether in Asia or in Europe, that these nations universally have a reverential or court language, distinct from the language of common life. But the same peculiarity is observable among the comparatively civilized portions of the Polynesian nation; and we know that it also distinguished the ancient Mexicans, for Dr. Robertson informs us, "they had not only reverential nouns but reverential verbs."

The whole aspect and character of the languages of the Warows of Guiana, of the Othomies, an ancient and singular Indian nation, of Mexico, and of the Araucanians of Chili, are decidedly Polynesian. The names also of certain of the ancient Mexican princes are unquestionably of the same origin. For example, the name of the unfortunate Guatimozin, the last of these princes, when divested of its reverential affix zin (Indo-Chinese siang) signifying prince or lord, is a pure New Zealand name, signifying Prince Ka Tima. The same Polynesian prefix, Ka, is also discernible, through the Spanish orthography, in hundreds of proper names in South America.

2. --In regard to manners and customs; the New Zealanders cultivate the ground in common, and lay up the general produce for future use in a common store-house, which is pronounced Taboo, or sacred, and which no private individual can enter thereafter for the purpose of removing any of its contents under pain of death. But the ancient Mexicans not only cultivated their land in precisely the same way, but laid up the produce also in common store-houses, which, Dr. Robertson informs us, were called Tambo. It is evidently the Polynesian word, with a slight dialectic difference, or perhaps rather as it would be written by a Spaniard.

There is nothing more arbitrary than the customs of different nations in regard to their treatment of the dead. On this subject, Diogenes Laertius, or some other ancient Greek author (for I have left my reference to the passage in New South Wales), humorously observes: "Different nations have very different customs in regard to the dead; the Greeks bury them, the Romans burn them, the Egyptians embalm them, the Scythians eat them." But there is a remarkable coincidence in the customs of the Indo-Chinese, Polynesian, and Indo-American nations on this point, viz. in their keeping the dead above-ground. The Rev. Mr. West, Chaplain of the Red River Colony in North Americas informs us that the Indians of that vicinity do not bury their dead, but place them in a shell or wrapper of buffalo skin elevated on a stage ten feet from the ground. Now this is precisely the general mode of disposing of the dead in New Zealand, as I have observed myself in repeated instances. In a short pedestrian tour which I made near the Bay of Islands, I happened to be separated a little way from the party I was with, when seeing something remarkable among the bushes at a little distance, I went up to it, and observed with a sudden and involuntary shudder, two coffins, the one painted black, and the other the natural colour of the wood, elevated on stages about six or seven feet from the ground. I afterwards ascertained that the corpse in the black coffin was that of a New Zealand woman, who had lived in concubinage with an English sawyer, probably a runaway convict. In conformity to European practice the body was deposited in an English coffin, not in a New Zealand box; but in conformity to the New Zealand practice, it was not interred, but elevated on a stage. Travellers inform us that in certain parts of South America, the remains of the dead are collected from all quarters at certain seasons, and deposited with great mourning (Abel-Mizraim, Genesis 1. 10, 11.) in their last place of sepulture. The same practice obtains also in New Zealand; and as it happened to be the periodical season for mourning for the dead when I was in the island, I went to two of their burying places to observe their customs on the occasion. In one of them I saw five women, who I was told had come from a great distance to mourn over a chief. They were seated on the ground, silently gazing at the remains of the chief, which had been taken out of his elevated coffin for the occasion; their cheeks and necks being covered with blood from the wounds they had been inflicting upon themselves with sharp muscle-shells as an expression of grief. The body of the chief, who had been dead many months, was lying on a sort of mattrass, together with the remains of two of his children, ornamented with birds' feathers, in an inner enclosure, into which no New Zealander, but his principal widow, was allowed to enter; his gun and several other articles that had belonged to him being neatly arranged in various places within the enclosure. The widow was sitting sorrowfully on the ground, close to the corpse, the whole of which was covered from the view, with the exception of the upper part of the face and head. The mouth, neck, and breast being covered with an English cotton handkerchief, I requested the mourner, through a European who was with me, who spoke the New Zealand language, to remove it that I might see in what stage of decay that part of the corpse was; but the poor widow delicately observing, that that part of the body was not fit to be seen, I of course did not press my request. In the other cemetery I visited I found seven young men kneeling over the remains of another chief, cutting their arms with sharp shells, and ever and anon uttering the most frightful ululations. These "cuttings for the dead," together with the practice of tattooing, which obtains universally in the South Sea Islands, and which Mr. West observed even among the Indians of the Red River Colony, appear to have been in practice among the ancient Egyptians, and the other earlier post-diluvian nations; for in the books of Moses they are prohibited, as heathen practices, to the ancient Jews: "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, NOR PRINT ANY MARKS UPON YOU: I am the Lord." Levit. xix. 28.

3. --In regard to architectural remains; the ancient tumuli, the ancient fortifications, and the ancient religious edifices of the Polynesians and Indo-Americans, are not only of precisely the same type and character, but that type and character are unquestionably the type and character of the pyramidal and colossal architecture of the remotest antiquity. My idea in regard to that peculiar type and character of the earlier post-diluvian architecture, is that it was the type and character of the public architecture of the ante-diluvian world, in which, from the longevity of man, time must have been of no consequence, and strength and duration every thing, and in which, moreover, tyranny would doubtless be of the most oppressive description; for the earlier post-diluvian nations would preserve that type and character in their public architecture in all parts of the world, as it can easily be shewn they did, notwithstanding the great change that had in the mean time taken place in the circumstances of the human race, on the same principle that, in climates altogether different, the Brazilian houses of Rio Janeiro and Pernambuco are built on the model of those of Lisbon and Oporto, while the English and American houses of Sydney and Philadelphia are built on the model of those of London and Edinburgh. It is singular indeed that we should have to look for the solution of that quaestio vexata, the uses of the pyramids of Egypt, to the South Sea Islands, and the table lands of the American Continent; but such is nevertheless the fact; for in these localities we find the very people of the pyramids still practising their ancient and infernal superstitions in offering human sacrifices on the summits of these pyramids to their deities of blood. The Spanish soldier historian, Bernal Diaz, informs us that the Spaniards who were taken alive by the Indians, when a party of the small army of Cortez was cut off during the siege of Mexico, on one of the causeways across the lake, were offered in sacrifice with cruel torture to the gods of Mexico on a pyramid in the ancient city, in sight of their agonized companions on the main land. It was evidently to this primitive and universal superstition that the ancient Jews were so addicted, that certain even of their reforming kings were unable to remove the high places or pyramids out of the land. It will be evident at all events to the intelligent reader, that while the study of the history and condition of the Polynesian and Indo-American nations is calculated to throw a flood of light upon the primitive condition of man, and to afford the most remarkable confirmation of the Mosaic history, the hypothesis of the Polynesian origin of the Aborigines of America is not based upon mere vague and fanciful generalities, like those upon which writers in almost all the languages of Europe for the last three centuries have hitherto endeavoured to assign, sometimes a Jewish, at others an Idumean, sometimes a Welsh, at others a Norwegian, sometimes a Kamtschatkan, and at others a Zenghis-khan-migration origin to the Aborigines of America. These hypotheses are all like "the baseless fabric of a vision;" they have no evidence of identity to stand upon. But the hypothesis I have endeavoured to establish exhibits innumerable evidences of such identity; and while it explains every thing peculiar and otherwise utterly unaccountable in the condition of the Indo-Americans, it goes to prove, in direct opposition to the speculations of infidel philosophy, and in particular to those of Dr. Von Martius, of Munich, a recent traveller in the Brazils, who regards the Aborigines of America as a distinct race of the genus Man, having no connection whatever with the rest of the family, "that God originally made of one blood all the nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth."
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