The Guardian AND EVENING STAR, With which is incorporated “ The West Coast Times.” THURSDAY, MAY 26th, 1921

Hokitika Guardian, 26 May 1921, Page 2

The Guardian AND EVENING STAR, With which is incorporated “ The West Coast Times.” THURSDAY, MAY 26th, 1921

CHILDREN OF THE SUN. i.\ “The Islanders of the Pacific**’ Lieu-tenant-Colonel T.R. St Johnston, onetime direct commissioner of the Lnu Islands, Fiji, sets himself to establish an interesting theory. He has travelled, says a reviewer, very extensively among the islands, and steeped himself in their anthropology and folk lore. Everywhere lie is struck with points of resemblance amidst wide apparent differences. The legends, the manners, and customs, the forms <>| worship, the great stone monuments of places so far apart as the Carolines, Tahiti, Tonga and Easter Island, in many eases suggest a common origin. Nor is that all. Tiie inhabitants of ancient Britain and Etruria were sun Worshippers; from the remains it seems that their form ol worship correspond with that of many ot the isliyid groups. The wooden sword of Melanesia might have been remodelled on the Roman sword, though that may be merely coincidence. The Hawaiian helmet is very like the GraecdRoman helmet, and even more like the head-dress of the ancient I hibetan priests. On the strength of this and other evidence, Colonel Johnston believes that the people of Europe and of the. Pacific are descended from th© one ancestor. His argument may he summarised as follows: —It is now generally ‘accepted that a Ttiranican-speak-ing race originated somewhere near the Caspian. One branch made its way to Europe, and threw off a seafaring race, which sought gold everywhere, which planted colonies and left monuments in Britain, Ireland, South Africa, India, and which worshipped the sun. Ihe other branch moved south through Persia and across India, driving before it the original black Dravidian Haniitic peoples out to Melanesia, and ultimately into the Pacific. In Melanesia this overland branch was joined by its cousins, the “seafarers,” who had come round by the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, and, advancing along the mute already used by the blacks, at last flowed out into the Pacific as the Polynesians. Colonel Johnston anticipates the objection that on account of the prevailing wind migration must have been from east to west, not from west to east. He admits that there mav have been a wave from South America, perhaps the back-wash of a wave which had already crossed the Pacific. But he insists that there is no reason why these early travellers should _ not have come from Melanesia. Within quite recent times certain Pacific peoples, .such as the Marshall Islanders, were better navigators than they are to-day. They bad larger craft and cunning charts made out of string. The seafaring race whose keels had ploughed the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Indian oceans would have little diffi-

<*iilty in beating up against the wind from the west. This leads him to a further proposition. The islanders lia\> survived the attentions, not always judicious, of missionaries and traders. Their susceptibility to various diseases introduced by the white man has diminished. He takes an optimistic view of their future, provided that they are given their chance; and lq> thinks that a mixture of European and Polynesian would produce a capital stamp of a man. That such a mixture would he nr. improvement on a mixture oi European and Chinese, or of European and negro, is explained by the fact that European and Polynesian have a common ancestry, a heritage of common blood, slight and remote, but still faintly discernible. But even if Col. Johnston has established his theory with regard to the peopling of the Pacific, and even though the half-caste Polynesian is often quite a good type, there exists a prejudice against miscegenation which will not he overcome by appeals to a racial kinship dating from the days of sun worship in England.