Page 145 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961
P. 145
ANNUAL ADDI~PSS. 141
the former to the latter country, within twenty-five or thirty
degrees of the equator; and south of these parallels, where.
westerly minds again prevail, the distance would be about ten;
thousand miles, with no resting place but Nem Zealand." Still,
it must be regarded as possible that rare instances may have,
occurred, in the course of ages, in which the crews of disabled
vessels may have outlived this long voyage and been cast upon
the coast of Soutli America. But in the north temperate lati-
tudes, everything is favorable to snch chance voyages; and
every consideration scelns to justify the conclusion that nume-
rous instances of the kind ,ml.lat have occurred during the thou-
sands of years the Asiatics have beell exposed to SUCII casual-
ties; and these instances would necessarily increase in frequency
as that continent became crowded with population, and com-
merce and navigation increased. By this means alone, we
may rationally conclucle, small coinnlunities were, froill time to
time, formed upon our north-west coast, and advanced in all
directions over tlie entire continent; and with this view of their
origin, me should naturally expect to find in the Indian race, the
representatives of all the Asiatic nations, and so~nething in
their civil and religious institutions, peculiar to each; we should
-- -p.--.---7.... ~p -. .. . . ---- ~.
-:tTlie question nntnrnlly arises liere. how we are to account, on these natu-
ral principles of dispersion, for the distribution of inhabitants tl~rough the
numerous t~cpicnl islands of tlie Pacific, a.gai17st the trude ~c~inds ?
In the first. place it niny be reiiinrlted, that the Asiatics, with their knowledge
of navigation, doubtless pushed their discoveries fur out into t,hc ocean b~ regu-
lar design or desperate flights by sen, from tl~e pursuit of enemies. In the
second place, disabled vessels, after being driven fnr out to sea by the westerly
winds and currents in the Nort,h Pacific, would be very likely, in iunny instan-
ces, to encounter northerly gales which would drive them within the reach of
. the easterly trade winds, and once in their power, they would be driven in a
south-westerly direction upon the islands of the tropics; itnd by a similar pro-
cess, some may have been driven Iroiii the Soutli temperate regi~ns nnd scat-
tered over the tropics in a northwesterly direction. Lastly; the more civilized
castnways upon the N. W. coast, ns they penetrated southwnrd through the
tropics, may, for a t'ime, have practised coast navig:itioii by such barks as their
means would enable them to construct, and some of tlleve may have been driven
off from the tropicdl coast of America, as their ancestors were from thc temper-
ate coast of Asia, and contributed to the peopliug of tlie tropical isles. This
last explanntion is tlie least satisfactory of the three, on nccount of the grcat
distanoe of the liearest islands to the coast, and the little evidence we have that
the natives were ever provided with water-craft of suflicient capacity to endure
a very long voyage. 1Ye may, perhaps, affirm thnt tlie two first nniued pro-
cesses were inevitable, and the third not impossible.
