Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

OF THE HUMAN KACE. 651 Archipelago, to Japan, to Kamscbatka, and to Australia, we are stopped by the vast Pacific— except at one point, Kamscbatka, and there, by the Aleutian isles, is an easy road to America. Now it is not probable that intercourse should have been begun by water, between various points on those extensive shores, (reaching from 60°, N. lat., to 40% S. lat.), without numerous accidents happening, such as vessels, boats, canoes, or rafts being carried out of sight of land by storms when, io-norant how to steer as their crews must have been, they were driven before the wind till they reached some un- known land, or were engulfed in ocean. Many such vessels, out of the numbers which must have been tempest-tost among currents and dangers of every kind incident to navigation, may have failed in finding land before their store of provision was consumed, and their crews reduced to the horrible necessity of feeding upon human flesh. When once the natural antipathy to cannibalism was overcome, recur- rence to similar food would have been less revolting on other occasions ; especially if, excited by rage or animosity, and de- prived of animal food, men had accustomed themselves to anti- cipate satisfying their hunger by the flesh of a miserable slave, or even of a late friend whom accident had estranged and turned into a blood-thirsty enem3^ Looking; over a modern chart of the Pacific we see a multi- tude of islands scattered, like stars over the sky, from the Indian archipelago to Salas y Gomez ;* whence to Mas-a-fuera, on the South American coast, the distance is not fourteen hun- dred miles ; and to the main land itself, about eighteen hun- dred. It is possible that other islands may have existed, but we now find a comparatively short distance between Easter Island and South America ; besides favouring circumstances of wind and weather which lead me to believe that a line of population went in that direction. It is not impossible that vessels should have crossed from New Zealand to South Ame- rica, running always before the fresh westerly winds so preva- lent southward of 38° ; neither is it at all unlikely, on the * Near Easter Island.