re recent
inventions. They can all be traced back for generations, and are
known by various persons residing on different islands who have had
no communication with each other. Some of them have their date in
the reign of some ancient king, and others have existed time out of
mind. It may also be added, that both their narrations and songs are
known the best by the very oldest of the people, and those who never
learned to read; whose education and training were under the ancient
system of heathenism."

"Two hypotheses," says Judge Fornander, "may with some plausibility be
suggested to account for this remarkable resemblance of folk-lore. One
is, that during the time of the Spanish galleon trade, in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, between the Spanish Main and Manila,
some shipwrecked people, Spaniards and Portuguese, had obtained
sufficient influence to introduce these scraps of Bible history
into the legendary lore of this people.... On this fact hypothesis
I remark that, if the shipwrecked foreigners were educated men, or
only possessed of such Scriptural knowledge as was then imparted to
the commonality of laymen, it is morally impossible to conceive that
a Spaniard of the sixteenth century should confine his instruction to
some of the leading events of the Old Testament, and be totally silent
upon the Christian dispensation, and the cruciolatry, mariolatry,
and hagiolatry of that day. And it is equally impossible to conceive
that the Hawaiian listeners, chiefs, priests, or commoners, should have
retained and incorporated so much of the former in their own folk-lore,
and yet have utterly forgotten every item bearing upon the latter.

"The other hypothesis is, that at some remote period either a body
of the scattered Israelites had arrived at these islands direct, or
in Malaysia, before the exodus of 'the Polynesian family,' and thus
imparted a knowledge of their doctrines, of the early life of their
ancestors, and of some of their peculiar customs, and that having
been absorbed by the people among whom they found a refuge, this is
all that remains to attest their presence--intellectual tombstones
over a lost and forgotten race, yet sufficient after twenty-six
centuries of silence to solve in some measure the ethnic puzzle of
the lost tribes of Israel. In regard to this second hypothesis, it
is certainly more plausible and cannot be so curtly disposed of as
the Spanish theory.... So far from being copied one