companion was ready in about a week; and, having taken up their abode in
it, they were permitted to live, as far as circumstances would allow,
according to their own customs. As it was in this village that
Rutherford continued to reside during the remainder of the time he spent
in New Zealand, we may consider him as now fairly domesticated among his
new associates, and may therefore conveniently take the present
opportunity of completing our general picture of the country and its
inhabitants, by adverting to a few matters which have not yet found a
place in our narrative.

No doubt whatever can exist as to the relationship of the New Zealanders
to the numerous other tribes of the same complexion, by whom nearly all
the islands of the South Sea are peopled, and who, in physical
conformation, language, religion, institutions, and habits, evidently
constitute only one great family.

Recent investigations, likewise, must be considered to have
sufficiently proved that the wave of population, which has spread itself
over so large a portion of the surface of the globe, has flowed from the
same central region, which all history points to as the cradle of our
race, and which may be here described generally as the southern tract of
the great continent of Asia. This prolific clime, while it has on the
one hand sent out its successive detachments of emigrants to occupy the
wide plains of Europe, has on the other discharged its overflowing
numbers upon the islands of the Pacific, and, with the exception of New
Holland[AJ] and a few other lands in its immediate vicinity, the
population of which seems to be of African origin, has, in this way,
gradually spread a race of common parentage over all of them, from those
that constitute what has been called the great Indian Archipelago, in
the immediate neighbourhood of China, to the Sandwich Islands and Easter