Page 148 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

144 WISCONSIN HISTOI~ICAL C~LLECTIONS.
the smooth bay, the floating log, or even the unhusked cocoa-nut
to buoy him along. I have seen children there, not more than
three years old, swimming off to the ship with nothing but a
cocoa-nut to hold by. This voyage accomplished (from one part
of an island to another) there is the island in the distance to
ztttract and allure; and the next step mould be-if we imagine
:m infant colony on an island of o, group-to fit out an expedi-
tion to some of those to leeward. The native then finds o,
hollow log, split in two. Like children herc, he has dammed
~lp his little mountain streamlet -with a dam of clay across. He
does the same with his trough, kneading the clay, and making a
clam with it across either end. He puts in a few cocoa-nuts, a
calibitsh of water, breaks a green branch thick with foliage,
sticks it up for a sail and away he goes before the mind at the
rate of three or four miles an hour. I have sccn them actually
do this. * * * But by some mishap, in the course
of time, his frail bark misses the islarid or falls to leeward; tlle
only chance then is to submit to the vinds and waves and go
where they will bear."
Lieut. MAURY then remarks that the Pacific Islander very
soon gets above the use of such rude contrivances, and describes
their method of constructing canoes that will carry twenty
plersons or more.*:
The foregoing remarks of' Lieut. MAURY appear to relate

*With all these valuable hints before him, it is surprising that Mr. School-
croft should have settled down upon the conclusion that the origin of the Indian
stock upon this continent dates hack to a period antcrior to the vritinga of
Horodotus and the Nilotic inscriptions. Indeed, those hints seem to have
brought a momentary gleam of light to his mind touching the mystcry of Indian
or~gin, when he says:-
'.It is no necessary consequence, however, of the principles of dispersion,
thrtt it should have been extended to this continent as the result of regular
design. Design there may have been. Asirt, Polynesia, and the Indian
Ocean, have abounded, for centuries, with every element of national discord.
Pestilence and predatory wars have pushed population over the broadest dis-
tricts of Persia, India, China, and all Asia. The isles of the sea have been
the nurseries of natione. Half the globe has been settled by differences of
teniperfture, oceanic currents, the search of food, thoughtless adventure, or
other forms of what is called mere accident, nnd not purposed migration."
Mr. 8. also remarks, following Lieut. M.'s letter, that we have traditionary
gleams of a foreign origin from separate stocks of nations; and yet the ques-
tion of the origin of vhat he considers the true aborigines, in his mind, seems
to have remained vrappcd in the profi)undest mystery.