Note 62-1 — CAPTAIN EDWARDS' REPORTS.

Niua-fo'ou (New Niua), discovered by W. Cornelis Schouten in the Dutch ship Eendracht (Unity) on May 14th, 1616, and named by him "Good Hope" Island. Twelve canoes came off, and some of them attempted to take the boat that he had sent ashore for water, but desisted on discharge of a volley which killed two men. He wrote: "The island was full of black cliffs, green on the top, and black, and was full of coco-trees and black earth. There was a large village, and several other houses on the seashore: the land was undulating, but not very high." No ship is known to have visited the island from 1614 to this visit in 1791.

The cocoanuts grown here are the largest in the world, but the specimens planted in other islands do not appear to maintain their abnormal size. The island is further remarkable from the fact that the Megapodius, or Scrub hen, is plentiful there, and nowhere else in the Pacific further east than the New Hebrides. The natives have no traditions of its introduction. The eggs have been prized as a delicacy in Tonga for centuries, and are exported thither by every canoe going southward during the breeding season. It is said that they are sometimes hatched artificially, but the young malao does not take kindly to the bush in Tonga, although the vegetation is much the same. Why should the bird be found in Polynesia, having skipped all the intermediate islands of Melanesia? To what story of the migration of races is it the only clue?