and as it corresponds in date with other large ethnic movements which are known to have occurred in the Malayan archipelago, it is more than probable that pressure from other invaders compelled the occupation of Java, which thus became the parent Hawaiki, towards which the Maori stands in much the same relationship as does his brother pakeha to the Garden of Eden.

But the same cause which drove these wandering Asiatics into Java, at a latter period led to its evacuation. And still the movement was in an eastward direction, towards the islands of Indonesia, the people as they moved becoming more and more expert in the art of navigation and sea-craft. In view of the scattered nature of the archipelago in which they now found themselves, their voyages became gradually longer, requiring larger canoes and more daring seamanship. They were beginning to leave the beaten path which hitherto had been the common course of the human race—the mountain, the river, and the plain. With them the sea was gradually becoming the broad highway which had to be traversed in order to find fresh resting-places, or to maintain communication with established outposts in more advanced situations. The spirit of the sea-gipsy, which led them to do and dare, was rapidly developing within them, and the knowledge thus born of courage and experience was shortly to prove invaluable to them in carrying to a successful issue their own great policy of conquest.

Wars and rumours of wars are again heard of, and are given as the underlying cause of the next movement southward from Indonesia, the date of which is so uncertain that it cannot safely be defined more strictly than as between the first and fourth centuries. It is unfortunate that we are driven to this loose estimate of time for so important a national event, because it was this final migration which led to the actual entry into Polynesia of these dark-blooded wanderers, and if our first hypothesis be correct, to their ultimate fusion with the fair-skinned, stone-building people who had preceded them by many centuries.

They had obviously come into contact with strange people and strange animals, for the existence of the former has been preserved in their traditions and the memory of the latter in their fantastic carvings. Not the least interesting of their stories is the finding of a fair-complexioned people, whom their fancy has elevated into the realm of fairies, and from whom they claim to have learned the art of net-making. Whether these mysterious people, who are said to have laboured only at night and to have vanished when the sun rose, were the original Caucasians who, we have supposed, set out from the eastern coast of Asia, and who were about to be absorbed by the more virile emigrants from India, or whether they were, as some suggest, a few wandering Greeks or Phœnicians on the coast of Sumatra, we cannot pretend to decide. But, in all its vagueness and fanciful setting, the tradition is interesting, as indicating the existence on their route of a people fairer than themselves, and the fact that they must have come into close personal contact with them. A careful reflection upon the probable circumstances attending the story of how Kahu-kura captured one of the fairy's nets inclines us to the opinion that it is the first evidence we have of the contact of the Indian branch of the Polynesian race with their whiter predecessors. These they would meet in island after island as they moved down the Pacific towards Fiji, which group they are believed to have occupied about A.D. 450.

Like all other dates connected with Polynesian migrations, this one can only be approximate, for the people were without any mode of reckoning time, except by reference to ancestral lines. But there is traditional authority for supposing that their descent upon Fiji was made in considerable numbers, and that for a time these islands constituted one of their principal colonising centres. Whether Tonga and Samoa were settled from this point seems doubtful; but it is certain from the marvellous stories which find credence in the traditions of this period that an era of extensive voyaging had set in, and that the newcomers began to spread themselves with considerable rapidity from atoll to island and from island to archipelago. These excursions into new realms naturally gave promise of an attractive home amongst the palm-covered islands; and, simultaneously with their policy of conquest and colonisation, they began the absorption and assimilation of the resident people. As the defending warriors were driven out or annihilated, the women of the vanquished were taken possession of by the victors, and their domestic arts were taken with them. This blending necessarily, in the course of many centuries, worked appreciable modifications in the physique and customs of both races, and gave to the world the Polynesian people as we know them to-day.

A race of stalwarts, long-headed, straight-haired, and brown-skinned, warriors from birth, full of courage, and ardent for adventure, they were not altogether devoid of those higher ideals which make for the elevation of man. They were deeply imbued with a love of poetry, which enabled them to appreciate in a rude way the beautiful in life and to preserve in quaint song and fantastic tradition the story of their wanderings and the prowess of their heroes. They were even enterprising enough to attempt the solution of the marvellous natural phenomena everywhere presented to them, which, to their simple minds, could have no origin except in the intervention of the gods.

With a continuous stream of fresh immigrants flowing in from the north to reinforce the southern outposts, the conquest and colonisation of the islands was now only a matter of time. Before we come to the period directly connected with our story, some seven hundred years had elapsed, during which every trace and even the memory of the original people had been effaced, and but for their stone monuments, which have withstood alike the shock of invasion and the ravages of time, their very existence would have remained as one of the problems of a forgotten past. But long before this period had been reached, some great ethnic or geographical event had occurred to terminate the further inflow of these invaders from the north. Either the movements of the nations upon the Asiatic continent supervened to make continued migration unnecessary, or geographical changes in the distribution of land and sea operated to make it more difficult, if not impossible. Certain it is that the supply of warriors was effectually cut off, and that at a time before the parent people had learned the use of metals. From this period, down through the ages until the day of their discovery by the Spaniards, the gulf which separated them from the rest of the human family remained unbridged, and the Polynesians were suffered to evolve their own racial peculiarities and develop their own national spirit, untrammelled by exterior influences. Isolated from the rest of the world, they lived in total ignorance of the progress with which other peoples were advancing towards a higher type of human development and loftier ideals of national life. They knew nothing of the growth of science or of art, and they derived no benefit from the stimulating effect of competition, or from the bracing conditions of a strenuous life. Nature was bountiful to them in the ease and abundance with which their simple wants were supplied, for it required neither labour nor ingenuity to provide for their daily needs. Hence there was little incentive to depart from traditional customs, or to seek more advanced methods than their fathers had learned and applied in that far-off time when they lived on the banks of the Ganges. Had it been otherwise, the Polynesians would not have been found still clinging to their stone