Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir
History
Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir
Great Britain -- Colonies -- History -- 19th century; United States -- Description and travel; Voyages around the world
Polynesian traditions mostly point to the Malay peninsula as the cradle
of the race, and the personal resemblance of the Maories to the Malays
is very strong, except in the setting of the eyes; while the figures on
the gate-posts of the New Zealand pahs have eyes more oblique than are
now found among the Maori people. Strangely enough, the New Zealand
“pah” is identical with the Burmese “stockade,” but the word “pah”
stands both for the palisade and for the village of wahrés which it
contains. The Polynesian and Malay tongues have not much in common; but
that variations of language sufficiently great to leave no apparent tie
spring up in a few centuries, cannot be denied by us who know for
certain that “visible” and “optician” come from a common root, and can
trace the steps through which “jour” is derived from “dies.”
The tradition of the Polynesians is that they came from Paradise, which
they place, in the southern islands, to the north; in the northern
islands, to the westward. This legend indicates a migration from Asia to
the northern islands, and thence southward to New Zealand, and accounts
for the non-colonization of Australia by the Polynesians. The sea
between New Zealand, and Australia is too rough and wide to be traversed
by canoes, and the wind-chart shows that the track of the Malays must
have been eastward along the equatorial belt of calms, and then back to
the southwest with the southeast trade-wind right abeam to their canoes.
The wanderings of the Polynesian race were, probably, not confined to
the Pacific. Ethnology is as yet in its infancy: we know nothing of the
Tudas of the Neilgherries; we ask in vain who are the Gonds; we are in
doubt about the Japanese; we are lost in perplexity as to who we may be
ourselves; but there is at least as much ground for the statement that
the Red Indians are Malays as for the assertion that we are Saxons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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