the dust and dirt of centuries; but they may be as truly relics of the past—message-bearing relics—as the fragment of clay cylinder or the stone arrow-head.

It is probably a general, and it is certainly a convenient, way of observing the customs, language, &c., of an uncivilised people to regard them as being the possessions of a primitive people; to look upon the wild strangers not only as savages, but as being the descendants of savages. On the Asiatic and African Continents such conclusions have been in some cases counterchecked by that which ancient history has told us, but, in regard to races of which little is known, the common method of regarding them is as barbarians, root and branch. This easy way of dismissing the subject is the method of the child with the fragments of ancient pottery, not caring for the maker because unconscious that centuries ago such a person existed; but for those who possess the spirit of inquiry and who will take the trouble rewards of discovery are surely waiting. If I assert that the language, customs, and traditions of the Polynesian Maoris have internal and almost unmistakable evidence that the forefathers of these Maoris once knew a higher culture than they possessed at the time of their discovery by Cook, I touch upon a field of inquiry which can be searched in many different directions, and which invites many workers, whose varieties of disposition and attainment will assist each other.

It would take up far too much space for a paper of this kind if I should descant on the examples of decadence which history presents to us. We have seen that sovereign cities like Nineveh, Babylon, Carthage, Tyre, Palmyra, and Thebes can pass away utterly from the active life of the world; while others, like Athens, Rome, Byzantium, and Alexandria, have been peopled by men little fitted to represent the fame of earth's dead masters. To-day we may pass among the Arabs as among the South Sea Islanders,^* and, asking the names of the builders of what are now gigantic ruins, be answered, “These were built by the gods, or by the evil spirits, in old time.” We even find that in Malacca the descendants of the Portuguese conquerors have fallen lower than the wild tribes around them, and have become bookless, letterless, nameless, immoral savages. How this decadence is wrought is not always easy to trace—probably in no two cases are the causes precisely the same; but the result is the same—forgetfulness and intellectual paralysis.

If we narrow down the inquiry to the case of the Polynesian Islanders, and admit for a moment, as a hypothesis, that it is possible that they once knew a higher civilisation, it

is pertinent to ask, “What caused forgetfulness?” It probably arose from emigration, and the result was worked out in two different ways. If a body of explorers, seeking new abodes, sets out among strange people armed for war, unless the expedition finds a higher civilisation than it left behind, or is constantly renewed by accessions in numbers from the parent country, the issue is almost certain to be degeneracy in culture. If we picture such an expedition starting, we see many armed men, few women (if any), few priests or other representatives of learning, and only such animals and such stores of food as can be most compactly stowed. Such a party emigrating into unknown seas has little chance of return; those who survive will take wives of the women of the country they colonise; hard work and hard fighting are their lot, and the finer, softer things of life are forgotten. Such we may imagine to have been the case with the New Zealand Maoris: in a variable climate, and in a land where animal food was scarce, sustenance would have to be wrung from earth and sea only by the incessant efforts of “the strong man armed.” In Eastern Polynesia and the islands lying nearer the tropics a different cause for deterioration presents itself. In lands where the work of a single day can provide food for a year, where the warm sun tempts to repose, and nature basks in prodigal luxuriance of vegetation, toil of any kind seems out of place, and laziness becomes one of the first duties of man. In this land of the lotus-eaters arts and artifices are forgotten, the calabash replaces the earthen vessel, the girdle of leaves becomes the successor of the woven garment, the bamboo knife is easier to procure than the blade, the metal of which must be smelted from the scarce and heavy ore.

This is, of course, a mere hypothesis; we see the islanders in their girdles of leaves, with their calabashes and their bamboo knives; we have no circumstantial evidence to show that they adopted these to the neglect of materials requiring more labour or skilled direction in manufacture. But there may be evidence which is not circumstantial, yet convincing; and a convergence of many lines may indicate a point as certainly as one line leading directly to the object. That in the case of the Maoris we find a possibility of rapid forgetfulness and deterioration is shown historically in their having forgotten the use of the double canoe within the present century, a thing hardly to be believed had we not the best evidence on the subject. If so useful, roomy, seaworthy a vessel as the double canoe (or even the outrigged canoe) can pass from memory in so short a time, we can easily understand how, in the thousands of years which lie behind us, the Maori could forget arts, appliances, and culture which did not seem

absolutely necessary for “the survival of the fittest” under adverse conditions. Amongst the lost arts which I believe their language and myths indicate is that of communication in a written language; and it is to this branch of inquiry that I shall confine myself in the present instance.^*

If we look at the tattooing of a Maori as a mere piece of ornamentation, I think we are regarding it as the child does the fragment of the cinerary urn. Some patterns of tattooing have undoubtedly become mere ornament, but I trust to be able to show a convergence of lines of evidence that will prove that such was not the original intention of tattooing as understood by the South-Sea Islander. Tattooing, as is well known, is almost a world-wide practice: it was used by our own ancestors up to the time of the Conquest, and in our army and navy is still a common custom. It differs according to the race, but it is divisible into two classes as to manner: the method by scar-making, and the pattern by puncture. The scar tattoo is generally used by savages—Africans, Papuans, Australians, Negritos, &c.; the punctured patterns by Japanese, Malays, Nagas, and Pacific Islanders. In some of the Polynesian Islands the tattoo is obviously copied from natural objects; thus, we are told that navigators found the Easter Islanders tattooed with figures of hogs, although the hog had become extinct locally years before. Even in New Zealand it is said that fern-leaves tattooed upon the back have been seen, although this must be a very rare case, as I have never been able to find any person but one who has seen such ornamentation.^† The common tattoo in New Zealand is highly conventional, and each part of the decoration is named and fixed. We see some faces with less tattooing than others, but, if the work has been properly done, it is all part of a constant scheme, and the only difference is in the stage arrived at when the work was discontinued. It has been said, however, that it was possible to know the tattooing of one face from that of another; if that is the truth, the tattooing

cannot have been on the conventional pattern, for one perfect moko is the exact likeness and copy of another. This refers only to the particular tattooing, in spirals, &c., with which we are generally acquainted; the face of a chief pourtrayed by Cook gives an entirely different set of markings; and, again, the mokokuri pictured by White^* shows a series of short straight lines, arranged in sets of threes, which are alternately horizontal and vertical. The difference between the decorations of one set of Pacific Islanders and the next, and even the different systems in vogue among the Maoris themselves, show that tattooing has probably had some common source, but has been so affected by an immense interval of time, and by the isolation of those practising it, that it is almost impossible to find out what the original form was. However, its form matters little compared with its signification, and I trust to be able to prove that its significance is unmistakable.

I have, in a former paper (Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xx., p. 361), called attention to the fact that the common word for tattooing had meanings leading to the conjecture that tattooing was once a form of writing; and I have now to strengthen that conjecture by showing that every word used by the Polynesians for tattooing points backward to the same conclusion.

When Cook returned to Britain from the South Seas he enriched our language with a new word, or what was said to be a new word in European speech, viz., “tattow,” as applied to a pattern punctured on the skin. The word is Tahitian, and should be written tatau. It is a form of the word tau, and is one of the most common and widely spread of Polynesian vocables. Besides its general meaning, “to puncture markings on the skin,” ^† it appears also to apply to trading and numerical calculations. In Maori, it means “to count”; in Moriori, “to calculate”; in Samoan, “to count, to buy, to barter”: in Tahitian, “to count or number”; in Tongan, “to trade”; in Niue, “to count, to buy”; in Marquesan, “to count”; in Mangarevan, “to be counted,” &c.^‡

These words so widely distributed show at once that the tattoo was not a mere ornament; it was something that was of use in buying and selling—some mode in which accounts

could be kept. Had the meanings been confined to this sense they might have alluded to the very rudest methods of numbering—to the mere tally-stick cut with notches, or to some simple arrangement of the kind for pricking off or dotting down numbers. There is, however, still another set of meanings for tatau which implies a great deal more than this. The word means, in Maori, “to imitate, to copy, to search, to examine”; in Samoan, “to be alike, to equal, right, proper, fit, to read”; in Tongan, “resemblance, equal, similar, to criticize, to remark upon”; in Tahitian, “to invocate, to address in prayer”; in Marquesan, “to recite, to relate”; in Paumotuan, “to describe”; in Hawaiian, “to give publicity to a thing, to publish, to proclaim, the government of an island, clear, explicit in expression, to explain, to take counsel, to resolve in one's mind, to put down for remembrance, a writing-down of the names of those who have to pay tribute, to describe, to mark out, to promulgate as a law, to print or paint on native cloth as in former times, to dot, to write, to set down words on paper.”^*

It seems to me to be certain that the word in most common use for tattooing, even if its use for counting or trading was the marking of tally-sticks, must have meant infinitely more before it could be used as signifying “to publish, to proclaim, to set down for remembrance, to describe, to print or paint on cloth as in former times.” Compounds also of tau point in this direction, such as matau, which everywhere means “to know, to consider, to mark attentively,” and show that it was an intellectual effort which the tatau was calling forth. Had we but this word tau alone to depend on, the inference would be very strong that tattooing was once something very different from the representations of hogs or fern-leaves, or from the conventional curves of our Maori pattern.^†

We will now take up another word. Many of us have admired the beautiful carvings which adorn the canoes, houses, food-stores, &c., of the Maoris. They have been executed with rude tools, and appear grotesque in their primitive conception, but they are nevertheless possessed of a beauty of their own, not to be judged by the rules of Greek art, but to be regarded with admiration for their symmetry and bold intricacy of execution.

This carved work is called by the Maoris whaka-iro, a word which appears on the surface to have its radical meaning in iro, “a worm, or maggot”; whaka-iro would thus seem to mean “causing to appear worm-eaten.” Whether this is the original meaning we will inquire.

Although whaka-iro is now applied to carved work, we find that in old times it had a different meaning. In an ancient legend, to be found in Grey's “Polynesian Mythology”, (edition 1885, p. 112), we are told that when Ngatoro-i-rangi by his incantations raised the great tempest causing the mountainous sea in which Manaia and his army were drowned, the body of Manaia was washed ashore and was recognised by the tattoo-marks on one of his arms. The word for “tattoo” here used is whaka-iro.^* Let us trace it comparatively. We have in Maori (besides whaka-iro) whaka-iro-iro, “striped, variegated”; wheiro, “to be seen, to be understood”; whairo, “dimly seen, imperfectly understood.” The corresponding words in Polynesian mean—in Samoan, “to show, to make known, a mark or sign, to mark, to distinguish”; in Hawaiian, “to predict, to guess, to tell before-hand”; in Tongan, “to show, to find, to discern, knowledge, understanding, a sign, a mark, to discover, to reveal, to promise, to call to mind, to signify”; in Mangarevan the words mean “a sign, to mark”; in Mangaian, “to mark, to take notice”; in Paumotuan, “to mark, to stamp, to signal, a signal”; in Aniwan, “to know, to teach”; in Niue, “to know, to recognise, to find, to discourse, to make known, to explore.” In Futuna (Horne's Island), we also find that the god Ailoilo was the deity who stood at the gate of heaven to note all who passed in.^†

Here we have a word which, although used in New Zealand for “carved work,” once meant “to make known by a mark or sign, to reveal, wisdom, knowledge, to teach, to predict, to foretell,” &c. If we consider that it could not possibly have always been restricted to signify either wood-carving or the twisting of worms in decayed wood we have a clear example of decadence, and this view is borne out by a very remarkable coincidence. In an erudite paper by Professor Lacouperie on the pre-Chinese languages,^* we find that he has written as follows concerning one of the aboriginal tribes of China, dispossessed through the conquest of their country by the immigration of the present inhabitants: “The Li are reputed to have known the art of writing, which they seem to have forgotten. Captain J. Calder has found near Yu-lin-kan some characters scrawled on the walls of a temple, which I think may have belonged to the writing of Tsiampa. We know that several migrations from the latter country took place in the tenth century. In some parts of the island the Li women carry a piece of lacquered wood, on which are written several lines of a ballad; the writing, however, is like the wriggling of worms, and cannot be deciphered.” We have then, in this extract, a record of a parallel case to that of our own Maori word whakairo. I think that, if it is a similar case, it is a very pathetic cause for reflection. Here is an expression which signifies to make marks or signs which others can understand, and regard as the vehicle of wisdom and knowledge, by which they teach, communicate, and know beforehand; plainly, it is an inscribed character. Then it becomes used to signify making marks on the skin by which persons may be known or recognised; then, as the characters lose their interpreters, the word implies “dimly seen, imperfectly understood.” At last, the significance of the marks is quite lost, intelligence has gone out of them, and the word becomes merely a name for carved wood, or for the twisting of worms in rotten wood. Surely, a sad and pitiful history of a vanished culture and a lost civilisation.

We now come to some curious words, of which the meanings are obscure, but which are full of interest. The Maori word ta, “to tattoo,” is in its most common sense used as “to strike with a stick”; and as the tattooing-chisel (uhi) is tapped lightly but firmly in order to drive the points of the instru-

ment through the skin we see the connection between the senses of “tapping” and “tattooing.” We have also a word in Maori, paki, “to slap,” and we find that in Paumotuan the word means not only “to chastise,” but “to tattoo, tattooing, to describe, to write.” In Tahiti this word signifies “to mark the skin with the tattoo, to write, to recite a tale”; in Futuna, “to chisel, to print, to engrave”; in Hawaiian, “to smite with the hand, to stamp, to print, a printing as native cloth is printed, to strike a tax, to stir up one's feelings, to make a solemn promise, a vow, a line, a cluster, tied up, bound together, writing arranged in a row or line.”^* So that here, too, we have the word used for tattooing and writing, referring to the making of promises, describing, reciting, &c. The Maori word tongi means “a point, a dot or speck.” In Samoan it means “to carve, to engrave, the dot of an i, to mark off a portion of the tattoo, to appoint or decree the amount of a fine, the payment for labour or produce, to give a payment.” In Niue it means “to pay”; in Tongan, “to engrave, to carve, payment, wages, exchange”; in Futuna, “to peck as a fowl, to engrave, to make a mark, to exchange.”^† Again, we have a word which, signifying “to engrave, to tattoo,” also means “to decree, to give payment, wages, exchange,” just as the words we have previously examined have done. There is no possible connection between “a dot, to peck as a fowl,” &c., and the meaning of “a decree, payment, trade,” &c., except the bond shown by engraving in some literary character, pecked out, so as to be understood by those decreeing, paying, or trading.

Before leaving the subject of tongi, “the dot or speck pecked out,” it will be well to consider the Paumotuan tito, “to peck.” In Mangarevan this word means “to peck, a point, a dot”; in Marquesan, “joined, united, put close together”; in Hawaiian, “a small dot, point, or speck, a spot on the skin, the figure marked on the skin by tattooing, spotted, striped.”

So by this it would seem that the tito was not only tattooing, but that it was in stripes or dots united closely together. The corresponding Maori word has none of these meanings; it is boldly “to compose a romance, to invent a fable.” If there is any connection between the Maori and the other Polynesian meanings of tito, it must signify that rows of pecked-out dots or stripes were used in which to compose or preserve a narrative or fable, unless the allusion is to the lost art of writing as being itself a fable or romance of times passed out of mind.

We have seen that tongi and tito mean to peck or dot in stripes. Let us examine the Maori word (tuhi) now used for writing as we understand it. The modern word for printing is ta, once used for tattooing (so well has the genius of the language preserved the faithful unconscious record), but the word for handwriting is tuhi. Tuhi properly means “to stain, to paint, to delineate, to point out”; also, “part of the tattooing on the face.” ^* In Samoan it means “striped, to mark native cloth, to point out as a road.” In Tongan it signifies “striped”; in Marquesan, “to point out with the finger”; in Mangaian, “marked, inscribed”; in Futuna, “to point out, to make known.” In Hawaiian we again come upon the more refined meanings, “to show, to point out, to teach, to give an appellation, to reproach with a reminder of some former delinquency, to think, to imagine.”^†

It is hard to see how such meanings as “to teach, to think, to imagine, to remind of some former delinquency,” can be connected with tattooing and striped native cloth unless the stripes were lines of writing appealing to the intelligence.

I have only one more word to bring to your notice, and I was led to the discovery of its connection with this subject only because I have devoted some time lately to the study of Paumotuan. It is the Maori word nakonako, signifying “recollection, anxious thought.” The Paumotuan form gives the following meanings: “Like that, thus, a spot, a stain, striped, variegated,^‡ to tattoo, tattooing, to write.” The Tahitian means “the markings on the skin” (tatau). The Hawaiian signifies “a slight ripple on the water, the ridges of