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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 52

The Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean

Having now shown the identity of the races inhabiting the islands of the Pacific with the remains of a nation still to be found in the islands of the Malay Archipelago, called by the intruding race indigenes or aborigines; that these people were attacked by strange and hostile nations; and that they had the means and capacity of moving by water, it will be the proper place to recount the legends or traditions which describe the several maritime expeditions, the causes of them, and their fate. Sir G. Grey, K.C.B., late Governor of New Zealand, has made the largest collection; the more valuable in that the traditions appear literally as uttered by the tohungas from whom he obtained them. Mr. J. White has also published some legends. Dr. Shortland's "New Zealand Traditions" is a scholarly work, and quite reliable. Of the late Judge Maning's tractate it is sufficient to say that he wrote it. There are other collections of more or less value.

Several expeditions arrived in New Zealand, all from a place called Hawaiiki by the Maoris of the present day, and so named in the legends. When the European first settled in the land, the geographical position of Hawaiiki was unknown to the natives; they had even lost all notion of its direction. But learned investigators having determined that, of the numerous islands which bore the name of Hawaii under slightly differing forms, the Hawaii of the Sandwich Islands had the best claim to the distinction, the doctrine has spread amongst the natives, and the direction of Hawaiki is now fixed in the north-east. Thus within one gene- page 93 ration many legends and traditions become ruined and worthless by the intromission of the ideas and reasoning of a foreign and civilized race. Yet one would have thought that the fact of there being a legendary Hawaiki in New Zealand—a Samoan Sawaii, a Tahitian Hawaii, a Rarotongan Awaiki, a Nukuhivan Hawaiki, a Tongan Habai, and a Hawaian Hawaii—would have caused amongst inquirers a suspicion that such a wide dispersal of one name throughout insignificant islands in a vast ocean, could have originated only by its introduction from some place which lived in the memories of men when the names were conferred, and which was common to all; just as wherever the English race has penetrated there will be found a Thames and an Avon, an Oxford and a Cambridge, all referable, however, to the original home of the race—by no means to each other.

There seem to have been thirteen expeditions into New Zealand, of which accounts have been preserved in the popular traditions, and others of which no specific stories exist, all from Hawaiki. This may be the proper place to notice the dialectic changes which the language spoken in the several islands has undergone—not, indeed, to pursue the investigation into the divergencies of each group, but merely to refer to the general principles (if that word may be used with reference to a process which is certain, but cannot be understood) which govern the phonetic corruption of a form of speech, when segregation of the people using it takes place. With the exception of the change or loss of consonants, a small creation of new words, and the loss of a few from tapu and other causes which need not be referred to, the Polynesian language is now as it was ages ago. In essentials it varies not over the whole Pacific, and a Maori sails through seventy degrees of latitude and ninety of longitude without finding his mother tongue insufficient for his needs.

Professor M. Müller has described in better language than I can find the mysterious system which seems to order the gradual change or phonetic decay of languages, when groups of people become segregated. One can understand why the Cush of the Bible, the Etaush of the Egyptians, became the Ethiopia of the page 94 Greeks. But it is difficult to find any reason why the Maori has lost the b, the f, the l, and the s—why other Polynesian or Sawaian dialects have lost the r, and preserved the l, have kept the f and lost the w; but without attempting to explain it, I will briefly quote what Müller says on the subject: "But what is more curious," he says, "than the absence or presence of certain letters in certain languages or families of languages, is the inability of some races to distinguish, either in hearing or speaking, between some of the normal letters of our alphabet.* No two consonants seem more distinct than k and t. Nevertheless, in the language of the Sandwich Islands, these two sounds run into one, and it seems impossible for a foreigner to say whether what he hears is a gutteral or a dental. The same word is written by Protestant missionaries with k, by French missionaries with t. It takes months of patient labour to teach a Hawaian youth the difference between k and t, g and d, l and r." Again: "The s is absent in several of the Polynesian languages, where its place is taken by h. Thus in Tongan we find hahake for sasake; in the New Zealand dialect heke for seke. In Rarotongan the s is entirely lost, as in ae for sae. The word hongi from the Samoan songi, meaning to salute by pressing noses, has been spelt by different writers, shongi, ehongi, heongi, h'ongi, and songi. F and s are wanting in Rarotongan." Mr. Hale in his grammar says: "No Polynesian dialect makes any distinction between the sounds of b and p, d page 95 and t, g and k, l and r, v and w. The l, moreover, is frequently sounded like d and t like k." And Müller says the very name of Hawai, cr more correctly Hawaii, confirms the view that consonants are more likely to be lost than vowels. It is pronounced in the Samoan dialect Sawaii, Tahitian Hawaii, Rarotonga Awaiki, Nukuhiwan Hawaiki, New Zealand Hawaiki, from which (he acutely observes) the original form may be inferred to have been Sawaiki. To this list I will add Tongan Habai, Sandwich Islands Hawaii. If Müller had been aware that one of the islands had still preserved the b he probably would have pronounced the original name to have been Sabai, as Strabo wrote it.

It will be convenient ourselves to follow the dialectic change of the language, and in future to abandon the word Sabai and Sabaians and use Hawai and Hawaians instead.

The priority of arrival of the several expeditions has been the subject of much dispute amongst the Maoris, each great section claiming the honour of having led the way. Most probably Ngahue's was the first canoe that touched the shores of New Zealand; but the question is not worth the trouble of a minute investigation. It will be convenient to take them in the order in which they are mentioned in Sir G. Grey's very valuable work, which should be consulted, for brief abstracts are here supplied.

* Thus the author of that very interesting book called "Poenamo," who is a man of cultivated mind, and who has been forty years in New Zealand, has failed in catching the true sound or spelling of many Maori words. In his title name he has put in a syllable too much at the beginning, and has mistaken a u for an o at the end. More remarkable still is the utter failure of Major Cruise (84th Regiment), who published a book in 1824, entitled," Journal of a Ten Months Residence in New Zealand," to catch the true sound of Maori words. He gives the following as the charm of the Maori priests for a fair wind:—

  • Show rue, show noa,
  • Show poo, keedé keedé
  • Keedea too pai darro
  • Tee tee parera rera
  • Kokoia, homai te show

The words which he purported to write are—
  • Hau nui, hau roa
  • Hau pukerikeri
  • Keria tupairangi
  • Titiparerarera
  • Kokoia, homai te hau.

Similarly, Major Cruise writes Toota-cotta for Tutukaka.