Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/111

Rh Atea, who has been shown to have lived about the first century, and the islands mentioned are clearly in Indonesia. Probably we may see in Forlong's statement, quoted on page 75 hereof, "Indian Malas, or Malays, Yauvas or Javans, Bali, and others were all over the Peninsula and the Archipelago B.C. 125," a prime cause for the easterly movement of the Polynesians, which probably setting in about that period, forced them to the east, and caused them to seek new homes for themselves.

Whatever powers of navigation the people may have possessed prior to their arrival at Java (Hawaiki), the vast number of islands in the Archipelago would induce a, great extension of their voyages, and generate a seafaring life, through which alone were they able at later periods to traverse the great Pacific from end to end in the remarkable manner that will be indicated. In the Archipelago, where most of the islands are forest-clad to the water's edge to this day, the water was the principal highway, and this necessitated constant use of canoes; whilst the location of the various branches of the people on different islands with considerable spaces of sea between, would induce the building of a larger class of vessels. It certainly seems from the very nature of the surroundings that Indonesia was the school in which the Polynesians learnt to become expert navigators.

If, then, the people lived in Indonesia some three or perhaps four centuries as the traditions seem to indicate, it is to be expected that some of its peculiar features, as contrasted with the later homes of the people, ought to be preserved in tradition: such, for instance, as some of the animals there found,—animals that often test the powers of man to overcome, and of which there is nothing similar in Polynesia. I think in the following notes abstracted