The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1870-04-23
HOW have the Islands of the
Pacific become PeOpIed?

This is a question, or problem, which has en-
gagged the attention of many literary enquirers.
| Some have thought that the races which occupy
the Society and Sandwich Islands groups came
: from South America, but if SO, they must have
come anterior TO the times of the lncas, or else
mysteriously lost the civilization of those times.
In this connection, it is interesting to read the fol-
owing communication from Mr.. Snow, an Ameri-
can missionary who has resided many years on
the Islands of Micronesia, and who recently left
here for the United States. lie says:
1.-The account of the two canoes that were cut Oh
i'll the neighborhood of the Marshall Islands, as re-
Gently printed in the Friend, is not exactly correct.
4 feet of canoes from Marshall Islands bound to
Namerik, touching at an uninbabited Island known
as Kill, or Hunters Island, found these two canoes
with fourteen men, one woman and a small child.
They stated that they had started from MALTA, (Ma-
Mia perhaps) five canoes of them, bound for their
own island, the name of which they gave as Weeleai.
They say they had been at sea five months, during
which time three of the five were lost, before they
landed on Kill. They had in their possession d
quantity of pearl shells, some turkey red cotton,
fOur small brass cannons, four camphor chests, some
AIDES and other iron tools, some coir bags and a good
deal of leaf tobacco. This last they smoked by roll
ing it up in bits of dried banana leaf, after the style
of the Spanish cigarita. The men had no other
clothing than the malo, but the women wore chemlse.
Two of the men were represented rs chiefs, but the
woman was II common native, and he mother of the
only child of the company. When discovered, they
were busy repairing their canoes and getting in read
mess to return from whence they came. They We're
very friendly, and liberal to the Marshall Islanders,
giving freely of their trade. Loeak the chief OF
Namerik, SO urged them that they accompanied his
fleet towards that island. Two days at sea, the
weather became so rough that the strangers were
obliged to abandon their two canoes and were distrib-
uted among the other canoes In the canoe of Loeak
were the two chiefs and the woman and child. Then
ensued a rush, and scramble for the remaining
property Of the strangers. The two strange chiefs
Immediately began to think that there were no hopes
for them TO reach their homes and that they were TO
be reduced to slavery under their captors. Conse-
quently they became desperate, prayed, gesticulated.
and then commenced fighting. The wife of LOeak
was killed instantly, and his only son MORALLY
wounded. Loeak himself barely escaped by leaping
overheard and swimming to smother canoe. 1t is not
to be wondered Mt that the natives OF Ralik should
feel that they must avenge the death OF their chleteSS
and her son. They did so. The two chiefs of the
strangers we're quickly shot to death, and the mother
Of the young child in her madness killed it, and then
all jumped into the sea and collecting into a body by
themselves, talking and wailing loudly together, all
went down to n watery grave"
Such is the account as given by the natives,
which is believed to be nearly correct. 1t is sad
enough to think that these poor people after long
and anxious months spent upon the sea in their
frail canoes, having Mt last reached land in safety,
only to have escaped the sharks of the ocean and
to fall into the hands of worse enemies of their
own kind. a German trading brig, sometime
afterwards, had arrived ut Ebon, and had on
board some articles procured in the way Of trade,
which were evidences to prove that the strangers
above spoken of had come from an island some
. 1000 miles west of Ebon. 1t is certainly very
singular that those two canoes should have come
through the whole Caroline group in their five
months voyage, and touch nowhere until they
reached that little uninhabited Island.
Had they been spared to communicate with the
missionaries located on the Micronesian Islands, a
new field for outstanding effort might have been
opened.