Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/52

40 America; but these, I hold, are due to expeditions that have sailed from Polynesia to the east, where some, probably most, of them settled and became absorbed in the races they found there. The traditional evidence of this contact with America is exceedingly meagre, but the discovery of Polynesian remains in several parts of South America, the strong probability that Alaskan ornamentation owes much to this influence, seem to prove a former connection.

In the present state of our knowledge of the ability of the Polynesians as navigators—about which we shall learn something further on—it is useless for some writers to insist that the prevalence of the S.E. trade winds would form a bar to voyages made from Central Polynesia to the American coast. The number of easterly voyages on record from various parts and under all sorts of weather conditions is so large, that we must conclude these able navigators paid little attention to the trade wind if a sufficient object required them to face it.

Naturalists do not seem to have finally decided as to the original home of the kumara, or sweet potato (Batatas), but the evidence gathered by De Candolle seems to show that Central America is the part where it grows spontaneously, and therefore must be its native habitat. It is possible we may see in the following quotation from an ancient Maori chant, a reference to America in the land where the kumara grows wild:—

"Ko Hawaiki te whenua, e tupu noa mai te Kumara."

"Hawaiki is the land where the kumara grows spontaneously."

It is said in the above that "Hawaiki is the land;" but we need not be mislead by this; for, there is no doubt this