Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/110

98 races they must have been acquainted with. The very names the Maoris give to these white people are peculiar: Patu-pai-arehe cannot have a meaning given to it as can most other names; nor can Waraki; in fact I believe both names to be corruptions of words of some other and foreign language learnt in ancient days from a foreign race.

If we allow that there is sufficient warrant for believing this contact with a white race, it is most likely to have occurred on the shores of India or the westernmost parts of Indonesia. Therefore, the two entries supplied by Forlong (see page 75 hereof) as follows:—"Probable date of the Phœnician inscription, South Sumatra, B.C. 450," and "Nearchus supposed to have sailed to Sumatra B.C. 323,"—may be a possible indication of the sources of the Polynesian traditions, and either the Phœnicians or the Greeks may have given them the fishing net. It was during this very period, if we trust the Rarotongan genealogies, that the Polynesians were migrating along the coast of Burma, the Straits of Malacca, Sumatra, and Java.

is impossible to tell from the information given in the traditions how long the Polynesians remained in Indonesia before pressure urged them onward to the Pacific, nor what the cause of the movement was beyond the mention of wars and other troubles, which may be inferred from other things rather than from any definite statement, except in the Marquesan Chants, which expressly refer to the wars, murders, famine, &c., and also show that some of them were taken into captivity. These events occurred in Papa-nui and Ahee-tai, several of them in the time of