The people of the island of Nanomea are a race of giants; they average quite 6 feet in height, and are proportionately muscular. When Mr. Whitmee visited the group, ten years ago, he was asked condescendingly, 'Why the whites were all such little men?' his interrogator adding that 'they looked as if they wanted a good meal.'

CHAPTER XXXVII.

POLYNESIAN TRADITIONS.

ALL the traditions of the origin of the world that I heard of in the Pacific agree in one particular; viz., that 'in the beginning' the earth was void and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep.' The Samoans say that that being the case, a certain Jupiter of their mythology sent from heaven his daughter in the form of a snipe to find dry land. After many unsuccessful visits one bare rock furnished a restingplace for this weary wanderer. Repeated descents of the birddisguised goddess still found the same rock barren, till her father at length deigned to send a little earth and a small creeping-plant to furnish the tiny continent. Watched carefully by the supernatural snipe, the plant was found to have got withered and was replaced by worms. Anyone who has noticed the important part which the earth-worm plays in the breaking up of the pent subsoil of a garden, or has read a recent work on the formation of vegetable mould by the late Dr. Darwin, will find no difficulty in seeing how the Samoans made their connection between the weed and the worm. In fact this tradition is simply a rude account of what we know does take place when naked rocks first exposed to

the air become covered with vegetation more or less rapidly, according to the temperature and other physical conditions.

The New Zealand Maoris and the Tahitians all connect the creation of the world with a rock. In the Windward Islands of the Society Group they used to say that the existence of the world was due to the procreative power of their chief god who was called Taaora, who embraced a rock which immediately brought forth the earth and sea. After this stupendous birth, the heralds of day, the dark and light blue sky, appeared before Taaora and asked for a soul for his offspring-the then lifeless universe. The reply of the god was, 'It is done;' and directed his son, the sky-producer, to carry out the mandate. The son looked up to the heavens, and they brought forth new skies and clouds, sun, moon, and stars, thunder and lightning, rain and wind. He then looked downward on the earth, and the soul of the God being breathed into the mass, it soon became changed, and earth, mould, mountains, rocks, trees, herbs, and flowers, beasts, birds, and insects, fountains, rivers and fish, took their rightful places in creation. The blueness of the sea and the submarine rocks and corals, and all the inhabitants of the ocean, were afterwards created by the same Raitubu, or sky producer.

The idea of development is apparent in both the Samoan and Tahitian traditions, and in fact, as far as I know, is universally shared by all races of mankind.

I do not think that the Samoans ever heard of Dr. Darwin or of Professor Mivart; but it occurred to me, as a friend leisurely retailed these native legends with that slight American drawl which is rather common in the Pacific, that the theory of evolution is at least as old as the native races of the great South Sea; and in corroboration of this it may especially be noted that the Samoans have a tradition that all higher forms of animal life, even up to the human race, are

developed from the original worm. Whether man is a distinct creation, as the Tongans have it, or is a very much improved ape, they do not say. On this matter I am, to slightly alter a well-known remark of the late Lord Beaconsfield, 'On the side of the Tongans.'

These people used to have, by the way, a curious tradition that the earth rests on the shoulders of their god; and when an earthquake occurs, he is supposed to be shifting his burden from one to the other. This Pacific Atlas must have enormous 'staying powers,' as earthquakes are few and far between in the Friendly Islands.

One of the best of my friend's Samoan legends was his quaint version of their discovery of fire. It seems that centuries ago-how long back he could not say, but he 'guessed it was before the Declaration of Independence '-there was a great fuss about gastronomy in Samoa, and the people were very much agitated on this important subject. It was agreed on all hands that the menus were anything but satisfactory, and that insular habits of feeding resulted in chronic dyspepsia and postprandial inconvenience of all sorts. Many were the remedies suggested, when a brave young chief addressed the conference we may suppose, and said the wretched condition of their stomachs and the unsatisfactory nature of their meals might wholly be attributed to their barbarous habit of eating their food uncooked. What they wanted was fire to cook it with, and that was the reform he urgently demanded in the name of his outraged liver. Asked by some indignant Conservative admirer of the old days, before these new-fangled ideas were talked of, where he was to get it from, he replied that the same force that caused earthquakes, upheavals of the earth, and boiling seas could furnish fire for them; and though warned by his friends, he stated his intention of at once

repairing to the cave where the god of the earthquakes and boiling springs lived, and ask for fire to enable them to make progress in the 'art of dining well.'

He was as good as his word-and calling on the rocks to divide, passed into the fearful presence of the fire-god. The young aristocrat seems to have 'jockeyed' the deity into giving a few cinders; but after a time, the latter repenting his weakness in yielding to the audacity of his petitioner, sallied forth, and by one fierce gust drove cooks, ovens, fire, and food all over the place. The prince, nothing daunted, again sought his deity, and is said to have entered into a personal combat with him.

Knowing full well that the digestions of thousands of his countrymen depended on his prowess, he fought the battle of 'cooking reform' with unsurpassed devotion, and in the end succeeded in severing one of the arms of the fiery god, whereupon the latter asked for terms, as he said he wanted the other one to maintain the balance of Samoa. An offer of a hundred

wives was indignantly refused by the young man. What he had come for, what he had fought for, was fire; and the possession of that, and at once, was the only condition he would make. He carried his point, and great was the jubilation in the Samoan South Kensington School when he returned, and the banquets of roast and boiled with which he was regaled are matters about which the natives talk to this day. By the self-devotion of Prince Ti-it-iti, Samoa passed in one day from the fearful regimen of cold (raw) leg of mutton to the possible enjoyment of a triumph of Delmonico's chef.

When the shock of an earthquake occurs in Samoa, the natives will sometimes say: 'Ah! if brave Prince Ti-it-iti had not cut off one of the arms of Mafuie, what a terrible shaking he could have given us.'

The Samoans still joke about Mafuie as seated down below, and with a long stick amusing himself by 'stirring up' the islanders whose ancestors got fire from him. Like the Tahitians, the Samoans have a tradition that one of their goddesses conceived by looking at the sun; and bringing forth a son, he received the name 'Child of the Sun.' As he grew in years he became acquainted with his origin; and when about to marry, he was directed by his mother to appeal to the sun, his father, for a fitting dower for his bride.

Availing himself of a very high tree, he ascended to the sun, and on making his request, he was asked whether he would have blessings or calamities. He naturally chose the former, and received them-Pandora-like-in a basket.

Here the story rather abruptly ended, but I learned subsequently that the Child of the Sun' had, after obtaining the blessings in his basket, continued to have some influence with his father, inasmuch as on one occasion, his mother finding the day too short for her mat-drying, she requested him to get his father to improve matters, and this is how the filial youth went to work just as the first rays of his father's effulgence appeared above the horizon of the broad sea, his earth-born boy threw a noose over him, with the result of nearly strangling his parent, who of course was still rising, and who naturally indignantly inquired the reason for his son's eccentric behaviour. The dutiful boy at once suggested the difficulty his mother had in getting her mats dried, and good-natured Sol gave a ready assent, and the hours of sunlight have been longer in Samoa ever since.

Whenever anything in nature seems unusual, the idea of physical force at once enters the heads of all the Pacific islanders; one simple instance will suffice to illustrate this very popular characteristic: