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New Zealand Mail, Issue 691, 29 May 1885, Page 17

* Suggestions for a History of the Origin and Migrations ol the Maori People ” is the title of a book which has recently been published by Mr Fenton", well kuown to Europeans and Natives in this Colony for many years as the able and upright Chief Judge of the Native Land Court. The question of whence" the Maoris came, and from what race they have descended, has been for a long time a puzzle to the unlearned, and a matter of much discussion, and much variety of opinion, amongst philologists, geographers, and antiquarians. If Mr Fenton has not solved the question to the satisfaction of all, he has at least set before us a clear, logical, and consistent theory, supported not only by that intimate acquaintance with the Maori character, language, tradition, and legend, which he has acquired in what may be called his long professional labours, but still more by a varied and extensive acquaintance with all that has been written on ethnical subjects, derived from the earliest records of mankind, in the iuscriptions and monuments of. Chaldea and Egypt, the works of the Greek geographers and the genealogies of the Hebrew Scriptures. Nor less has he been aided in his task by the habit of collating and weighing documentary evidence, derived from his training as an accomplished Eaglish barrister. To criticise such a work would be a bold task on the part of anyone in this country; on our part it would be presumptuous. It will, we are well assured, receive the full attention such a treatise deserves from those in Europe, competent to" deal with the subject—his peers in erudition, whose theories it combats,, or whose conclusions it supports. Nor can we do more than give a brief sketch of the substance of Mr Fenton’s book—such a sketch only as may induce those who take an interest in such subjects to peruse the work itself. Indeed, if the work has a fault, it is the brevity with which matter, which might justly have been expanded into a formidable volume, has been condensed into a comparatively short treatise within the reach of all. Fairly to analyze that which is itself an analysis of comprehensive argument, is all that we can attempt. Mr Fenton, then, first establishes the fact of a powerful and wealthy nation which existed for many centuries in the great basin of Mesopotamia stretching from the Persian Gulf and crossing the Red Sea into Africa, under the name of the Cushites —the descendants of Cush the son of Haim: the son of Noah ; and that this race was intermingled with the descendants of Joktan, a descendant of Shem. Driven from their earlier homes they appear under the name of Sabseans on" the southern shores of Arabia, and their cities became the emporium of trade, and themselves for centuries the great navigators of the shores of the Indian Ocean. Again under the pressure o£ invasions from the North and East, and finally by the Romans from the West, vast emigrations took place to the Islands of Sumatra aud Java, and so westerly, to the Islands of the Indian Archipelago. Still the subjects of invasion at a later period by tbe Hindoos and tbe Malays, their wanderings extended over the remotest Islands of the Pacific Ocean, aud even as far as the coasts of South America. The story recounts the movements of one of the primitive families of man over three thousand years, until some of their tribes found a home at last, some six hundred years ago, ou the New Zealand shores. One of the most interesting points in Mr Fenton’s inquiry is—Where is the Havvaiki or Hawaii whence, according to all Maori legends, their ancestors came to New Zealand ? Finding the name in the same or a cognate form in many of the Pacific Islands, the conclusion is arrived at that the word points to some real or mythical hero or locality which was common to the race before it was dispersed amongst its present habitations ; and the word is identified with the Saba of the Sabieans, thus handed down as a sacred memorial of their Common Ancestor in all the manifold tribes into which the race was divided, and incorporated in the legends of many centuries later in which the meaning of the original word had been long since lost. That the Maoris have no relation to the Malay, a mongrel race, from whom they have often been supposed to be descended, appears to be conclusively proved; notwithstanding the casual similarity of words which became interpolated into their speech from intercourse with their invaders in

the Asiatic islands. The physical type, notwithstanding some partial intermixture of blood, is essentially different in the races. Nothing can be more interesting than the manner in which the Maori legends are entwined by Mr Fenton, into the world’s history, taking up the tale at the period when the earlier records leave us, and uniting in one our view of the race from its cradle on the plains of Shinar, to its aged decrepitude in the people amongst whom we have made our own homes. Mr Fenton sumsuphis conclusions in the following words :

It is not part of our undertaking to enter into any inquiry as to the subsequent piigrations of this ancient race amongst the islands of the Pacific. In such migrations the Maoris have taken no part. The sum of our investigations, I submit, is—l. That the Maoris are the same j) eo P^ e as Moors or Moris of the Malay Archipelago, the Mahri or Homeritai and Himyarites of South Arabia, and that their eponymic ancestor is Himyar, the third in descent from Joktan the son of Eber, the ancestor of the Hebrews ; and 2. That the other tribes of Polynesia are members of the same great family and nation, ranching off, genealogicallyspeaking, from the same stock in the epoch of Himyar. And that they all, under the names of Chaldeans, Babylonians, Cushites, Akkadians, or Ethiopians, dwelt together with representatives of all the Noachic families of man in the plains of Sliinar, from the very earliest ages, speaking a language which bore as much resemblance to the Maori language of to-day as the Aramaic of Abraham and his ancestors does to the existing Hebrew of that patriarch s descendants —probably much greater resemblance. Nor can we refrain from quoting the words in which Mr Fenton takes leave of his readers: —

A few years hence, when the race of men whose varied career we have been following from tbe time when they walked with Abram in the great citj r of TJr, through, their periods of grandeur iu Southern Arabia, .and .whcMse wanderings we' have accompanied in the Indian and P'acific Oceans, shall have clisappeared from the face of the earth, their history • will possess an interest which no human effort can now excite.. We have been present at their cradle in the great Mesopotamian basin, before the races of men had dispersed themselves over the earth, and we or our children will, it can scarcely be doubted, stand over their grave. Their ancestors were building huge temples in honour of the hosts of heaven, which they worshipped as gods, and conducting a . gorgeous, though cruel, religion, and were subjects of a splendid empire, whose literature and libraries still exist, at a time when our own ancestors were wandering, an unknown people, in the regions of Central Asia. Let, then, the great English nation treat the remnant of the race with gentleness, and learn from their varied career the transitory nature of all human greatness.