subsequent periods of migration was carried as common treasure-trove of
the imagination as far as New Zealand on the south and Hawaii on the
north, and from the western Fiji to the Marquesas on the east, repeats
the same adventures among similar surroundings and colored by the same
interests and desires. This means, in the first place, that the race
must have developed for a long period of time in some common home of
origin before the dispersal came, which sent family groups migrating
along the roads of ocean after some fresh land for settlement;[2] in the
second place, it reflects a period of long voyaging which brought about
interchange of culture between far distant groups.[3] As the Crusades
were the great exchange for west European folk stories, so the days of
the voyagers were the Polynesian crusading days. The roadway through the
seas was traveled by singing bards who carried their tribal songs as a
race heritage into the new land of their wanderings. Their inns for
hostelry were islets where the boats drew up along the beach and the
weary oarsmen grouped about the ovens where their hosts prepared cooked
food for feasting. Tales traveled thus from group to group with a
readiness which only a common tongue, common interests, and a common
delight could foster, coupled with the constant competition of family
rivalries.

Hawaiian tradition reflects these days of wandering.[4] A chief vows to
wed no woman of his own group but only one fetched from "the land of
good women." An ambitious priest seeks overseas a leader of divine
ancestry. A chief insulted by his superior leads his followers into
exile on some foreign shore. There is exchange of culture-gifts,
intermarriage, tribute, war. Romance echoes with the canoe song and the
invocation to the confines of Kahiki[5]--this in spite of the fact that
intercourse seems to have been long closed between this northern group
and its neighbors south and east. When Cook put in first at the island