altogether, that the real truth lies. It is this. The Melanesians landed on the north-western shore of Vitilevu, and thence spread eastward throughout their own group. At the islands of the Lau group they met a check in the 400 miles of open ocean that lay beyond, swept by the contrary wind of the south-east trades. Meanwhile the Polynesians, having long colonized the eastern groups, perhaps by way of Micronesia or Futuna or even by the north-eastern islands of the Fiji group, but certainly not by Great Fiji, entered on their period of navigation which Fornander assigns, I believe erroneously, to the eleventh century, were carried westward by the south-east trades, by single canoes whose male castaways were generally killed and eaten, but whose females were taken to wife by the chiefs. The superior attractions of their lighter coloured progeny led to the women of the mixed race being in request as wives among the darker Melanesians to the west. Many such castaway colonies are referred to in Tongan tradition. Early in the sixteenth century King Kauulu-fonua pursued the murderers of his father through the islands of the Samoan group to Futuna in vessels more seaworthy than the Tongiaki of Cook's day.[10] Kau Moala, the navigator, voyaged to Fiji at the close of the eighteenth century,[11] when we learn that the _grand tour_ for a Tongan gentleman included a campaign in Fiji. [Pageheader: POLYNESIAN CASTAWAYS] The people of Ongtong Java ascribe their origin to a Tongan castaway canoe; the names of the Tongan ancestors of the Pylstaart Islanders (since removed to Eua in Tonga) are recorded, though their shipwreck is two centuries old. The people of the reef islands of the Swallow group, though purely Melanesian in everything but their tongue, have traditions of castaways who were influential enough to impress their language, but not their blood upon their entertainers, just as the Aryan immigrants impressed their customs, folklore and language upon the Neolithic peoples they found in Europe.[12] The natives of Rennell I. and Bellona I. in the Solomons have preserved the physical characteristics of Polynesians. It is far more probable that Nea and Lifu in the Loyalty Islands, and Numea (Noumea) in New Caledonia received their Polynesian names from such chance settlement, than that they are, as Fornander would have it, echoes of permanent colonies which passed away more than fifteen centuries ago. Turning to Fiji itself we find innumerable traditions of such Polynesian visitors, though never a trace of the far more important event of a Polynesian occupation. The chief family of Nandronga traces its descent from a single Polynesian castaway who was washed up by the sea about 1750. The chief of Viwa three generations ago took to wife a Tongan girl, the only survivor of a murdered crew. The chiefs of Thakaundrove claim relationship with the kings of Tonga through an ancestress of that family who was cast away early in the