13 SEPTEMBER 1834, Page 17

LANGS VIEW OF THE POLYNESIAN NATION. "How was America peopled?"

was a question that employed the quidnuncs till the discoveries of Coorc in the South Sea. The mode in which New Zealand, the Friendly, the Sandwich, the Society Islands, and—passing the smaller groups scattered over that immense ocean — the isolated Easter Isle, first became inha- bited, and from what race the aborigines sprung, were points that came in happy time to turn attention from a matter where novelty of illustration appeared likely to be exhausted since a gentleman had found ana identified the Lost Tribes of Israel in the Red Indians of the back woods. Assuming one of the islands to be peopled, the facts collected by navigators and the reason of the case seemed to show, that it was possible, by the accidents of storms and currents, for these inhabitants to be distributed over some of the others. But, waving the difficulties of the Sandwich Islands, and still more of Easter Isle, the stumble was at starting. How came the first spot to be peopled? was it from Asia, was it from America? or were the inhabitants indigenous? To "demon- strate" the truth of the matter, not only as regards the discoveries of Com but of COLUMBUS, is the object of Dr. LANG. He corn-

Europe : the fecundity of Shem has peopled two quarters of the globe, and one of those quarters an hemisphere of itself. It may be gathered from these remarks, that we deem the sub- ject which the worthy Doctor has undertaken too obscure for human genius to penetrate : we also suspect that he is deficient in a knowledge of the sciences and the learning necessary for its in- vestigation, even were it less mysterious than it is. The book,. however, is not without interest : the author is very clear, and very earnest ; if superficial, he is also pleasant; and his ideas, if more comprehensive than some of his predecessors, are not more start- ling, perhaps not so absurd.

The first position of the Doctor is the uniformity in the inhabi- tants of the Pacific Isles. " From the Sandwich Islands in the Northern to New Zealand in the Southern hemisphere—from the Indian Archipelago to Easter Island near the continent of America (an extent of ocean comprising sixty degrees of latitude and one hundred and twenty of longitude, i. e. exactly twice the extent of the ancient Roman empire in its greatest glory),—the sane primi- tive language is spoken, the same singular customs prevail, the same semibarbarous nation inhabits the multitude of the Isles." If these customs be examined, their Asiatic origin is distinctly traceable. TI most ancient and remarkable feature of Asiatic society, is the distinction of caste: this also prevails to a great extent in the South Sea Islands, and in the Friendly Isles the numbers and orders are very similar to those of Hindustan. The taboo of the Pacific, by which a person or thing is wholly or par- tially forbidden approach or contact, bad or has something analo- gous to it throughout Asia, and reached even to ancient Attica : take the instance of the show-bread of the Jews, forbidden to all save the priests; and the Athenian olive-trees, sacred to Minerva. Again, circumcision is decidedly an Asiatic rite: it is practised in several groups of the South Sea Isles. Moreover, in " their phy- sical conformation, and their general character, the natives of the South Sea Islands strongly resemble the Malays." Asiatic cus- toms and sports, modes of thinking, and corresponding peculiarities of action, are also discovered; and the tradition of some of the islanders points in the direction of Asia as the spot whence their ancestors first arrived. But the resemblance of the language of the Polynesian nations with that of the Malays is the grand argu- ment for the Asiatic origin. The strange coincidence has been noted and admitted by every Oriental scholar, and every competent navigator, whatever might be the opposite conclusions drawn from it. In their roots, in their monosyllabic character, in their con- struction, and in their having an ordinary and a ceremonial dialect, the languages bear evidence of one having been derived from the other, or both from one common root. Put all these timings toge- ther, argues Dr. LANG, and the inference coupled with their com- parative proximity is strong, that the South Sea Islands were peopled from the Indian Archipelago, or rather, as it eventually turns out, from the South-east coast of Asia.

Thus far there is nothing of novelty in the Doctor's facts or conclusions. He next, having shown that the objection urged as to the uniformity of the winds is invalid, proceeds to argue, that America was peopled, not from Asia by wanderers crossing over Behring's Strait, but from the South Sea Islands. Nothing, he maintains, is better established than this— that man degene- rates from civilization, when cut off from his fellows and exposed to hardship. It is therefore neither likely nor feasible, that indi- viduals could cross the deserts of Tartary and Siberia, pass the narrow sea which separates Asia and America, land in the cold and sterile region which they would there find, and, becoming Red Indians and barbarians, afterwards emerge into the com- paratively enlightened people who founded and maintained the empires of Mexico and Peru. As, according to Dr. LANG'S own showing, these nations must have been in advance of the islanders from whom he represents them to have sprung, and as the hard-

ships of successive tempest-test voyages of many thousand miles, even " in the beautifully-carved gallies of the maritime Malays," would not have improved their civilization, the premises would seem to cut two ways. The Principal of the Australian College thinks otherwise; and lie argues, from the greater civilization having been found on the Western coasts of America—in Chili, Peru, and Mexico, whilst on the Eastern or Atlantic side of the mountain ranges of South America, and in the forests of the North, the inhabitants were more barbarous—that this is strong 'evidence of an Asiatic or Polynesian origin : a conclusion which he endeavours to confirm by a variety of arguments drawn from their customs, their institutions, their arts, and their modes of building. He adds, and truly, that it would be more likely for the islands to have peopled the continent, than the continent the isles (as some maintain); for it would be impossible to pass America, but exceedingly easy to miss the groups. The Doctor does not, however, pause here ; the greatest is behind. When the Europeans first arrived in India, says he,

they found the Malays powerful, but displaying traces of having

been in former ages far more so. Their language, too, bears marks of the most remote antiquity in structure; enriched, though perhaps corrupted, by two successive engraftings : the Sanscrit or Brahminical, which took place at an early period, and has become almost fused with the original; the Arabic of a later date, which exhibits less evident marks ofamalgamation. But, in the qualities

already enumerated—the roots, the monosyllabic character, the construction, and the two dialects —the pure Malayan resembles

the Chinese, &c.; and is identified still more closely with the Polynesian. The true annals of China, however, show that their

empire is of a most remote antiquity. A similar observation applies to the period when the Sauserit language was engrafted upon the Malayan. Time must have been allowed for the peopling of America, and for the subsequent declension of their inhabitants ; for decline they did, as is evident from the remains of their monuments. From all this, and many minor arguments which we have not space to enumerate, the theorist infers, that the primitive Malayan is one of the original tongues supernaturally bestowed at the building of Babel : that the people upon whom it was conferred travelled towards the South-east of Asia, and founded an empire upon whose debris the present Chinese and the former Malayan empires arose. They took with them the ante- diluvian arts which they doubtless possessed—the models of which we see in " the colossal statues, the immense temples, and the vast pyramids of Egypt :" their " beautifully-carved Rallies traversed the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific in all three- Cons :" in short, they peopled the South Sea Islands ; they medi- ately founded the kingdoms of Mexico and Peru, " whose monu- ments of a similar character to that of the Egyptians, we may rest assured, were the work of a people whose civilization was derived immediately from the same primitive souree,"—that is, the ante- diluvian arts, and the builders of Babel. So that after all, Mr. O'BRIEN was right when he declared that the Round TOWerS, or something like them, were to be found amongst. the Indians of North America. The builders, however, came not from Ireland, but the remote East ; nay, who knows but what the Emerald Isle was peopled from Babel via America ?

In this short abstract of Dr. LANG'S "%Tim, many arguments and many illustrations are of course omitted. By this abridg- ment the author sometimes suffers, sometimes gains,—more gene- rally perhaps the latter; for, like a genuine system-monger, he allows nothing to stand in his way. He makes no distinction between possible and probable premises. but draws positive con- clusions from each. He admits of no difference between peculiar and general resemblances: thus be reads the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the antediluvian world in the picture-writing of Mexico,— though the most barbarous of nations, the Bushmen, have some freemasonry of a similar kind; and he identifies the Mexicans with the Asiatics, because their taxes were levied in. kihd, —as if this must not be the case in all countries where no currency exists, although habit, after coinage takes place, may in nations not prone to change continue what necessity began. Lastly, he argues ad voluntatem: inferring not what his facts or his reason- ings support, but what be wishes.

It is not easy to give specimens of his graver arguments, on account of their connexion ; but we can give one or two of a more curious kind. Here, for instance, is

Tits ORIGIN Or NSW ZEALAND CANNIBALISM AND GENTILIT7.

Whether the first inhabitants of New Zealand had been driven from their native island by accident or by the fortune of war, it is aql0F•ible to ascertain. There is a singular feature, however, in the political a-inct of that portion of the Polynosian nation, which I conceive throws stone light on the history of their original migration, as well as on the origin of a horrible practice, which, to the utter disgrace of humanity, has certainly- hero extensively prevalent in that island, as well as in many of the other islands of the Pacific I >coati. The prac- tice I allude to is that of cannibalism ; and the feature in the political aspect of the island, that serves to account in some medsure for the origin and prevalence of that practice in New Zealand, is the absence of' every thing like a distinction of caste.

I have already remarked, that the Asiatic distinction of caste has been preserved with greater exactness in the Friendly Islands than in most of the other groups. But in the island of New Zealand, whose first inhabitants were in all likelihood Friendly Islanders, there is no distinction of caste whatever,—every New Zealander, who is not a prisoner of war, i. e. a slave, professing himself a ranyatira, or gentleman. We cannot suppose, however, that a large canoe filled with people, either hastily collected after a defeat in time of war, or pro- ceeding on a voyage to some neighbouring island in time of peace—for it must have been by a party of natives in such circumstances that the island of New Zealand was first discovered—should have left the Flintily Islands without having persons on board of various castes. But if the wretched inmates of such a vessel had by any accident been kept so long at sea (as they must necessarily have been ere they reached New Zealand) as-to have expended all their stock of revisions, their only and their miserable resource (one shudders to think of it !) would be to kill and eat one of their own number. And in such a case of dire- ful emergency, the first victim would doubtless be the man of lowest caste ; for the idea of putting a person of inferior caste on the same level with a noble or chief, in any circumstances, would never occur to a Polynesian. It is therefore highly probable, from the present state of society in New Zealand, that the mi- serable wretches who first landed on that island had previously been so long at sea, that they had successively killed and eaten every individual of inferior caste on board their vessel ; and that ere they reached the unknown land, they had be- come, through absolute necessity, ferocious cannibals. That the taste for hu- man flesh, which had been acquired in this manner by the fathers of the New Zealand nation, should afterwards have been found to minister to the desire of vengeance, or been indulged in fur its own sake, is nut at all extraordinary.

The following throws a new light upon the cause which prompted the erection of the tower of Babel, and the reason for the confusion of languages. We have now a key to the hatred of despots of all kinds to any thing in the shape of popular tongues.

I have already observed, that the earliest effort of the combined labour of the postdiluvian inhabitants of the earth, was to build a city and a tower whose top should reach the heavens. This latter expression is doubtless a mere hyperbole, intended to denote the prodigious elevation to which it was proposed to carry the tower ; but the fact that a tower or pyramid (for it is allowed on all hands that the tower of Babel was a pyramid) was the sort of building which the earlier postdiluvians proposed to erect, suggests the two following questions : 1st,

"What was the object in view in erecting a building of that kind? and From whence had the builders borrowed or conceived the design of so peculiar a Structure ?

Whether the ostensible object of the architects of the tower of Babel was to prepare a suitable mausoleum for the mouldering remains of departed greatness, or to rear aditiyh place fur the worship of the Divinity, the real object of its pro- jector is sufficieutly obvioua from the sacred narrative. The budifing was evi- dently intended to subserve the purposes of personal ambition, to concentrate rads to enslave the rapidly increasing and extending population of the recently deluged world ; in short, to pave the way for the establishment of a universal sad despotic monarchy. And what could possibly have suggested so singular a nu. thod of effecting such an object, but that the plan had been adopted and hem found successful before ? In short, there is reason to believe, that such towers as the tower of Babel were the proud distinctions of the metropolitan cities of the antediluvian world, the favourite appendages of antediluvian royalty, the usual evidences and effeets of antediluvian despotism. For there were giants, i. e. men of prodigious ambition—men openown in those days. And no wonder that individuals of this description—the Napoleons and the Alexanders of the world before the flood—should acquire extensive dominion, and exercise their authority with a tyranny and oppression unequalled in modern times, when they could not only accumulate in their own persons the wisdom and experience of generations, but could cuunt upon whole centuries to mature their plans and to consolidate their power. It was doubtless to counteract the enormous evils that had arisen from this state of things in the antediluvian tam Id—to deliver humanity from the violence and oppression to which it had subjected a large portion of the human race, and to prevent the recurrence of that universal and enormous depravity to which it had so powerfully contributed—that the Divinity himself beneficently inter. posed, at the building of the tower of hotel, to confound the projects of those ambitious men who wished to reenact the antediluvian drama in the postdiluvian world. In short, the necessity for extinguishing the whole antediluvian race, was the first &yin's vindiee nod's ; the necessity for preventing the recurrence of that state of things which had rendered such a catastrophe indisposalAy necessary, was the second. In the former of these conjunctures, the Divinity in- terposed with a deluge of water ; in the latter, he interposed by gradually h ten. ing the duration of human life, Joel by suddenly rendering human lanAtiag,e, which had doubtless previously been a bond of union and concentration, a source of separation and dispersion.

Philosophic teachers inform us, that it is a great thing to dis- tinguish between the possible and the impossible, and resolutely to eschew the pursuit of the latter. The origin and early migration of nations is most unquestionably a study of this kind. It is nut, however, without its advantage. The peculiarities of manners, customs, &e. which its followers collect, are not—when tested, be it always observed—without use to the philosopher and the historian. The close attention which they give to various lan- guages, and the comp:risen to which they submit them, though strained and fanciful in itself, is of benefit to the philologist. The reader w h.) has not been accustomed to investigations of this bind, will derive much amusement from Dr. L LNG's book, and have some instruction suggested upon the nature and construction of language.