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 from the other,
they are in fact independent and original versions of a once common
legend, or series of legends, held alike by Cushite, Semite, Turanian,
and Aryan, up to a certain time, when the divergencies of national
life and other causes brought other subjects peculiar to each other
prominently in the foreground; and that as these divergencies hardened
into system and creed, that grand old heirloom of a common past became
overlaid and colored by the peculiar social and religious atmosphere
through which it has passed up to the surface of the present time. But
besides this general reason for refusing to adopt the Israelitish
theory, that the Polynesian legends were introduced by fugitive or
emigrant Hebrews from the subverted kingdoms of Israel or Judah,
there is the more special reason to be added that the organization
and splendor of Solomon's empire, his temple, and his wisdom became
proverbial among the nations of the East subsequent to his time;
on all these, the Polynesian legends are absolutely silent."