Abraham Fornander has done inestimable service to future students of Oceanic ethnology by preserving for their use songs and traditions that would otherwise have passed into oblivion, but he will be used as a storehouse of data rather than as an exponent of history, and I feel that I am best serving his reputation by cutting away the false deductions that would have tainted the sound and wholesome facts which form the larger portion of his work. I cannot leave him without wishing that he had made better use of Bancroft's saying, which he printed as his text on the title-page, "It is now a recognized principle in philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical traditions, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as true, without having in the beginning some foundation in fact." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: _The Polynesian Race_, by A. Fornander, Vol. i, p. 193.] [Footnote 2: We detect here a flavour of the commentator's superior education.] [Footnote 3: A somewhat futile proceeding unless they were of wood.] [Footnote 4: Distant land] [Footnote 5: Fijian canoes are sculled with long oars worked perpendicularly in a rowlock formed by the cross-ties of the outrigger, or of the two hulls in a twin canoe. With powerful scullers a speed of three miles an hour is attained in a dead calm.] [Footnote 6: _The Polynesian Race, Its Origin and Migrations._ London, 1880.] [Footnote 7: _The Polynesian Race, Its Origin and Migrations_, Vol. i, p. 33.] [Footnote 8: _Ibid._, Vol. i, p. 167.] [Footnote 9: _Ibid._, Vol. i, p. 33.] [Footnote 10: See my _Diversions of a Prime Minister_, p. 308.] [Footnote 11: Mariner's _Tonga_.] [Footnote 12: _The Melanesians_, Codrington.] [Footnote 13: Tukuaho, Premier of Tonga, and descendant of the Tui Tonga and Tui Haatakalaua families, was staying with me at Auckland, N.Z., when Ratu Lala, Tui Thakau, of Fiji, arrived in the town. Both chiefs asked me to bring about a meeting on the ground of their relationship. Though each could speak the language of the other their shyness led them to insist that I should interpret the conversation, which was carried on in Fijian and Tongan. After the usual formalities the two chiefs spoke of the adventures of their Tongan princess through whom they were related, and the Tongan and Fijian versions of the tradition were substantially identical.] [Footnote 14: "Unfortunately we have no well-preserved account of the Flood from the Cushite-Arabian quarter; but I am inclined to consider the Polynesian version as originally representing the early traditions on this subject among the Cushite-pre-Joklanite Arabs."--_The Polynesian Race, Its Origin and Migrations._ London, 1880, p. 90.] [Footnote 15: The Vunivalu geneology of Mbau.] CHAPTER III THE AGE OF HISTORY