He was a devoted Christian hero, a splendid scholar, and was deeply interested in natural science. He published an account of his researches and life in the Pacific in a work known as "The Missionary Enterprise," in which he proved conclusively that all the copper-colored occupants of the Sandwich, Society and Friendly Isles, and, indeed, all the other groups of that ocean, and also the Quichuas, or Incas Indians of Peru, are of Malayan origin. Their complexion and anatomical traits are the same; and their languages are all dialects of those of Malacca, as he has proved by placing a sufficient number of common words from each of their tongues in parallel columns. The Malays, and their kindred in these clusters of isles, are, as their ancestors were in past ages, as nautical in their habits as the ancient Phoenicians or the Northmen.
As Prof. Edward Fontaine well says in his great work, "How the World Was Peopled," "The settlement of the islands of the Pacific, and even of the western shores of South America, was not only an easy task to the nautical Malays of the empire of 'the islands of the sixth sea,' but, in some cases, an unavoidable consequence of their adventurous life upon the ocean. The strong and regular winds which blow across the Pacific facilitate the voyages of all who attempt its passage. The inhabitants of it use now, as they have done from time immemorial, vessels admirably adapted to its navigation. They still send 'ambassadors in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters.' {FN} Their double canoes, made of the hollowed trunks of trees strongly lashed together, and furnished with what are termed 'outriggers,' formed of light and buoyant logs of bamboo attached to their gunwales, and projected a considerable distance beyond their sides, can not be capsized. The bamboo is the Arundo giganteus (the gigantic bulrush); and, when the boat is rolled by the waves from side to side, these outriggers rest upon them and prevent it from turning over. They are dexterous anglers and expert swimmers. The feat of Leander, in swimming across the Hellespont, is often outdone by the almost amphibious natives of the Polynesian isles. Embarked with their families in their double canoes, and supplied with their calabashes (large, strong gourds of water), and angling and fowling implements, they live upon the ocean's breast, which affords ample nourishment for all their simple wants. The copious showers, which fall during the prevalence of the monsoons (winds which blow six months in one direction, and the other six in the opposite), furnish them with an abundant supply of water. So free is that ocean from storms that it has acquired the name it bears, the Pacific. Far out of sight of land, they are in no great danger of any accident, except that of losing their reckoning. They are very liable to this misfortune from the want of a compass, a knowledge which their ancestors probably possessed, but which they have lost. If they miss their course, which often happens, their lives are not much imperiled, but it is then almost impossible for them to regain their native isles. They can live upon the fish, aquatic fowl, eggs, coconuts and other food afforded by the surface of the deep, and drift before the gale until it wafts them to America, or to some island west of its shores."
{FN} Isaiah xviii,2.
In this manner South America undoubtedly received her largest, earliest and most civilized population. They were of the Shemitic branch of the human family, Malay Polynesian division, and reached the shores of Chile and Peru, by way of the islands of the Pacific. We have shown by quotations from the Bible and Josephus that one branch of the descendants of Shem journeyed east, took to ships and settled the adjacent islands of the sea.
Now these people must have had some knowledge of ship-building and navigation. Had not their ancestors been saved in the ark? {FN} And were not the Hamites, or Phoenicians, becoming a great maritime people possibly at this very period, on the shores of the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean?
{FN} A ship recently constructed on the plan of the ark has proven a perfect success as a vessel for heavy freight.
So we have proven that they actually started across the Pacific Ocean not many centuries after the dispersion at Babel. Is it not the most reasonable and probable conclusion that since the western shore of the Pacific was their place of embarkation, and eastward their direction (and we have certainly proven these two points), that America would eventually be their goal or destination?
God had told the descendants of Noah to "Multiply and replenish the earth"; they at first refused to obey his command, whereupon He determined to make them obey, and, as we have seen, confounded their language and dispersed them. Now is it reasonable that He would have been satisfied with a partial obedience, resulting only in the peopling of a few islands of the Pacific, when the boundless continent of America lay upon its other shore? Can any reasonable man believe that those ancient mariners, propelled by the power of Omnipotence in fulfilment of His command, and with the known spirit of restlessness and discontent which has characterized the progressive men of all ages, could discover a few islands lying in the direction they were sailing, but fail to eventually find a vast hemisphere lying in the same course and extending through four of the zones of the earth?