eyes, when engaged in the various ceremonies of their CHAP. II. rude worship. The idols, we are told, were different in every island, there being no one type or symbol which had secured the approval of the general mind.

In some cases there is reason to believe that their notions have received a certain colouring from an occasional intercourse with Europeans. For example, in Otaheite it is mentioned as a tradition received from their fathers Tradition respecting that the first human pair owed their existence to the god the first man. Taaroa, who, after he had formed the world, created man out of red earth. It is added that this deity one day caused the man to fall asleep, and, while he lay in a state of insensibility took out one of his bones, of which he made a woman, whom he gave to him as his wife. Some of the islanders maintain that the name of the female was Ivi, which would by them be pronounced Evé. The native term literally signifies a bone; but figuratively it is also applied to a widow and to a victim slain in war. It is justly remarked, that, should a stricter inquiry confirm the truth of this statement, more especially with regard to the antiquity of the opinion, it will afford one of the most remarkable oral traditions yet known relative to the origin of the human race.*

The traces of primeval belief which prevail among the people of the South Sea, will be found to lend great probability to the conclusion, that the nations whence they originally emigrated must have been acquainted with some of the leading facts contained in the Mosaical history. Other of their tenets appear to bear a great resemblance Analogies to to the more striking features of Hindoo cosmogony. The account of the creation given in the Institutes of Menu accords in no small degree with the Polynesian legends as to the production of the visible world by the power of their god. The Brahmins say, that he having willed to produce various beings from his own divine

* Polynesian Researches, vol. i. p. 110. Mr Ellis, who collected with great care the floating notions of the people, is dis posed to think that Ivi or Eve is the only aboriginal part of the story, as far as it respects the mother of the human race.

Hindooism,

Tradition respecting the creation.

CHAP. II substance, first, with a thought, created the waters, and placed in them a productive seed. That seed became an egg bright as gold, blazing like the luminary with a thousand beams, and in that egg he was himself born, in the form of Brahma, the great forefather of all spirits. The waters were called nara, because they were the production of narau, the Spirit of God; and since they were his first place of motion, he is thence named Narayana. A rude version of this legend is still preserved in the Sandwich Islands, where the mythologist continues to teach that the terrestrial frame was produced by a bird, an emblem of the deity. This divine creature laid an egg upon the waters, which, afterwards bursting of itself, gave an origin to the concave firmament and the convex earth, subsequently removed from each other by the agency of Ruu, one of the most powerful of the divinities. Hence the holy mountain Me-ru, the abode of the Hindoo gods, is also the paradise of some of the South Sea Islanders, the dwelling-place of their departed kings, and of their most distinguished benefactors. Varuna and Vahni, who have a niche in the Brahminical pantheon, are also found with a slight alteration among the natives of the Pacific. Varua and Vaiti equally denote a spiritual existence; and both these terms are still in use, on either side of the equator, as part of the religious vocabulary of the copper-coloured tribes.*

Traditions respecting the deluge

It is not a little interesting to find that traditions of the Deluge have existed from the earliest period among the natives of Polynesia. They narrate that in ancient times Taaroa, their principal deity, being angry with men on account of their wickedness, overturned the earth into the sea, all of which sunk in the waves, except a few projecting points, forming the various clusters of their islands. The memorial preserved by the inhabitants of Eimeo records that, after the inundation of the

The resemblance between the Polynesians and Hindoos is in some respects so striking as to lead to the remark of Bishop Weber, that many things which he saw among the inhabitants of India reminded him of the plates in Cook's Voyages.

world, when the waters subsided, a man landed from a canoe, and erected an altar or marai in honour of his god.

CHAP. IL

dition of the

deluge.

The most circumstantial account of this remarkable Tahitian tra event, supplied by Mr Orsmond, is translated as follows: "Destroyed was Otaheite by the sea; no man, nor dog, nor fowl remained. The groves of trees and the stones were carried away by the wind. They were destroyed, and the deep was over the land. But these two persons, the husband and the wife (when it came in), he took up his young pig, she took up her young chickens; he took up the young dog, and she the young kitten. They were going forth, and looking at Orofena (the highest hill in the island), the husband said, up both of us to yonder mountain high. The wife replied, no, let us not go thither. The husband said, it is a high rock and will not be reached by the sea; but the wife replied, reached it will be by the sea yonder: let us ascend Opitohito, round as a breast; it will not be reached by the sea. They two arrived there. Orofena was overwhelmed by the waves Opitohito alone remained and was their abode. There they watched ten nights; the sea ebbed, and they saw the two little heads of the mountains in their elevation. When the waters retired, the land remained without produce, without man, and the fish were putrid in the holes of the rocks. The earth remained, but the shrubs were destroyed. They descended and gazed with astonishment: there were no houses, nor cocoa-nuts, nor palm-trees, nor bread-fruit, nor grass; all was destroyed by the sea. They two dwelt together; and the woman brought forth two children, a son and a daughter. In those days covered was the land with food; and from two persons the earth was repeopled."*

The natives of Raiatea ascribe the safety of the surviv- Raiatean traing couple to the miraculous circumstance that the island dition of it. of Toamarama, on which they, instructed by the god Ruahatoo to take refuge, resisted the approach of the

* Ellis, vol. i. p. 387.

D

CHAP. IL water, though it rose every where around to the height of several thousand feet. Their belief in the Deluge, though accompanied with some difficulties of a physical nature, remains unshaken; and, in support of it, they allude to the coral, shells, and other marine substances occasionally found near the surface on the tops of their highest mountains. These, they maintain, could neither have been carried thither by the inhabitants, nor have originally existed in the situations in which they are now seen, but must have been deposited by the waters of the ocean when the islands were inundated.

Ellis's remarks on these traditions

Without any more special reference to geology, we are certain that no one will question the soundness of the observation with which the author of the Polynesian Researches concludes his narrative. "The memorial of a universal deluge existing in those communities by which civilisation, literature, science, and the arts have been carried to the highest perfection, as well as among the most untutored and barbarous, preserved through all the migrations and vicissitudes of the human family, from the remote antiquity of its occurrence to the present time, is a most decisive evidence of the truth of revelation. The brief yet satisfactory testimony to this event, preserved in the oral traditions of a people secluded for ages from other parts of the world, furnishes strong additional evidence that the Scripture record is irrefragable. In several respects the Polynesian account resembles not only the Mosaic, but those preserved by the earliest families of the postdiluvian world, and supports the presumption that their religious system has descended from the Arkite idolatry, the basis of the mythology of Comparison the Gentile nations. The sleep of Ruahatoo accords with the slumber of Bramah, which was the occasion of the crime that brought on the Hindoo deluge. The warning to flee and the means of safety resemble a tradition recorded by Kaempfer as existing among the Chinese. The canoe of the Polynesian Noah has its counterpart in the traditions of their antipodes the Druids, whose memorial states the bursting of the lake

with Asiatic

traditions.

Пlion, the overwhelming of the face of all lands, and the CHAP. II. drowning of all mankind, excepting two individuals who escaped in a naked vessel (one without sails), by whom the island of Britain was repeopled. The safety which the progenitors of the human race are said to have found in caves, or the summits of the mountains, when the waters overflowed the land, bears a resemblance to the Hawaiian legend; and that of Mexico, in which Coxcox, Comparison or Tezpi, and his wife are represented as having been with Mexican preserved in a bark, corresponds with the Otaheitan tradition. Other points of resemblance between the Polynesian account and the memorial of the Deluge circulated among the ancient nations might be cited; but these are sufficient to show the agreement in the testimony to the same event, held by the most distant tribes of the human race.'

traditions.

After the manner of most primitive nations, these simple reasoners ascribe the origin of all things, even of their divinities, to night or darkness. Taaroa himself, who is sometimes represented as uncreated, or as having existed from the beginning, has his era also measured by a reference to the period when he emerged from the gloom of chaos, and assumed the office of a demiurgus. But whatever may have been the foundation of their mythology, the Polynesians were taught to see their The homes of gods in clouds, and hear them in the winds. The spell of enchantment was thrown over every scene, whether by sea or by land. They conceived themselves surrounded by intelligences wherever they contemplated the active powers of nature; and in the rising sun, the mild light of the moon, the shooting-star, the flame of

Ellis, vol. i. p. 394. On the subject of religion, Captain Cook remarks, that they reproach many who bear the name of Christian. You see no instance of them drawing near the Atua with carelessness and inattention. The supplicant is all devotion he approaches the place of worship with reverential awe; uncovers when he treads on sacred ground; and prays with a fervour that would do honour to a better profession. He firmly credits the traditions of his ancestors. None dares dispute the existence of the Deity."

the Polynesian gods.