although one of their traditions states that all the islands were formerly united in one fenua nui, or large continent, which the gods in anger destroyed, scattering in the ocean the fragments, of which Tahiti is one of the largest, yet others ascribe their formation to Taaroa, who is said to have labored so hard in the work of creation that the profuse perspiration induced thereby filled up the hollows, and formed the sea; accounting, by this circumstance, for its transparency and saltness. Others attribute the origin of the world, the elements, the heavenly bodies, and the human species, to the procreative powers of their deities; and, according to their account, one of the descendants of Taaroa, and the son of the sun and moon, and, in reference to his descent, the Manco Capac of their mythology, embracing the sand on the seashore-begat a son, who was called Tii, and a daughter, who was called Opiira. These two, according to their tradition, were the father and mother of mankind.

But the most circumstantial tradition relative to the origin of mankind is one for which, as well as for much valuable information on the mythology and worship of the idols of the South Sea islanders, I am indebted to the researches of my esteemed friend and coadjutor, Mr. Barff. According to this legend, man was the fifth order of intelligent beings created by Taaroa and Hina, and was called the Rahu taata i te ao ia Tii," The class, or order of the world, of, or by, Tii." Hina is reported to have said to Taaroa," What shall be done, how shall man be obtained? Behold, classed or fixed are gods of the po, or state of night, and there are no men." Taaroa is said to have answered, "Go on the shore to the interior, to your brother." Hina answered, "I have been inland, and he is not." Taaroa then said, "Go to the sea, perhaps he is on the sea; or if on the land, he will be on the land." Hina said, "Who is at sea?" The god answered, "Tiimaaraatai." "Who is Tiimaaraatai? is he a man?" "He is a man, and your brother," answered the god; "go to the sea and seek him." When the goddess had departed, Taaroa ruminated within himself as to the means by which man should be formed, and went to the land, where he assumed the appearance and substance which should constitute man. Hina, returning from her unsuccessful search for Tiimaaraatai at sea, met him, but not knowing him, said, "Who are you?” "I am Tiimaaraatai," he replied. "Where have you been?" said the goddess: "I have sought you here, and you were not; I went to the sea to look for Tiimaaraatai, and he was not." "I have been here in my house, or abode," answered Tiimaaraatai, " and behold you have arrived, my sister, come to me.” Hina said, "So it is, you are my brother; let us live together." They became man and wife; and the son that Hina afterward bore they called Tii. He was the first-born of mankind. Afterward Hina had a daughter, who was called Hinaereeremonoi; she became the wife of Tii, and bore to him a son, who was called Taata, the general name (with slight modification) for man throughout the Pacific. Hina, the daughter and wife of Taaroa, the grandmother of Taata, being transformed into a beautiful young woman, became the wife of Taata or man, bore him a son and a daughter, called Ouru and Fana, who were the progenitors of the human race.

One account states that the visible creation has two foundations or

origins, that Taaroa made the earth, the sun, moon, and stars, heaven, and hell; and that Tii made man of the earth. According to this tradition, they believed that of the earth at Ati-auru, a place in Opoa, Tii made a woman, dwelt with her in a house called Fare-pouri, in Opoa, that she bore him a daughter, who was called Hina-tumararo; she became the wife of Tiimaaraatai, and from these the world was peopled: Tii and Taaroa the people imagined to be one and the same being; but that Taaroa dwelt in the region of chaos, and Tii in the world of light.

Another tradition stated that the first inhabitants of the South Sea Islands originally came from a country in the direction of the setting sun, to which they say several names were given, though none of them are remembered by the present inhabitants.

Their traditions are numerous, often contradictory, and though it is difficult to obtain a correct recital of them from any of the present inhabitants, yet more might have been inserted; but they can scarcely be said to impart any valuable information as to the country whence the inhabitants originally came. Some additional evidence, small indeed in quantity, but rather more conclusive, may be gathered from the traditions of the mythology, customs, and language preserved among the Tahitians, and inhabitants of other isles of the Pacific, when they are compared with those prevailing in different parts of the world. One of their accounts of creation, that in which Taaroa is stated to have made the first man with earth or sand, and the very circumstantial tradition they have of the deluge, if they do not, as some have supposed, (when taken in connection with many customs and analogies in language,) warrant the inference that the Polynesians have a Hebrew origin; they show that the nation whence they emigrated was acquainted with some of the leading facts recorded in the Mosaic history of the primitive ages of mankind. Others appear to have a striking resemblance to several conspicuous features of the more modern Hindoo or Braminical mythology. The account of the creation given in Sir W. Jones's translation of the Institutes of Menu accords in no small degree with the Tahitian legends of the production of the world, including waters, &c, by the procreative power of their god. The Braminical account is, that "He (i. e. the Divine Being,) having willed to produce various beings from his own Divine 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 born himself, in the form of Brama, 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 ayana, or place of motion, he is thence named Narayana, or moving in the waters. In the egg the great power sat inactive a whole year (of the creator); at the close of which, by His thought alone, he caused the egg to divide itself. From its two divisions he formed the heavens (above) and the earth (beneath,") &c. It is impossible to avoid noticing the identity of this account, contained in one of the ancient writings of the Bramins, with the ruder version of the same legend in the tradition prevailing in the Sandwich Islands, that the islands were produced by a bird, a frequent emblem of deity, a medium through which the gods often communicated with

men; which laid an egg upon the waters, which afterward burst of itself, and produced the islands; especially if with this we connect the appendages Tahitian tradition furnishes, that at first the heavens joined the earth, and were only separted by the teva, an insignificant plant, draconitum polyphillum, till their god, Ruu, lifted up the heavens from the earth. The same event is recorded in one of their songs, in the following line :

Na Ruu i to te rai:

Ruu did elevate or raise the heavens.

Meru, or Mount Meru, the abode of the gods, the heaven of the Hindoos, is also the paradise of some classes of the South Sea islanders, the dwelling place of departed kings, and others who have been deified.'

Το

It is one of those problems which human sagacity has not been able, and probably never will be able, satisfactorily to solve, How those comparatively small islands, so remotely situated from any of the continents or other larger islands, should have been first peopled. cut the matter short at once, some have resorted to the absurd theory that the aboriginal inhabitants of each country and island, are not only indigenous to the country, but that they have derived their origin, like the vegetable world, from the earth itself, by some mysterious process of nature. But, beside the fact that this theory contradicts the Holy Scriptures, which assert that God made of one blood all the nations of the earth,' it is unphilosophical. The laws of nature, while left uncontrolled by a supernatural agency, acting under the same circumstances, uniformly produce the same effects. Hence if they were competent at one time to produce a human being, endowed with rationality, they would be competent to produce the same effect at all other times; and hence the production of human beings from the earth would be as common as the growth of vegetables. But the manifest absurdity of the supposition renders it unworthy of farther refutation.

Others, whose belief in supernatural agency reaches beyond all credible bounds, suppose that the islands of the seas were first peopled by the ministry of angels-that by the agency of these angels men were transported from one island to another, or from the continents to the islands. This idle theory needs no refutation. Much better is it to confess an entire inability to account for the existence of any fact than to resort either to an unphilosophical hypothesis, or to those miraculous interpositions which are not only susceptible of no proof, but absolutely incredible. When miracles are wrought by the Almighty, they are performed in such a way, and under such circumstances, as to render them subjects of proof to the senses and understandings of men. If we had an authentic record that at such a time,

through the interposition of supernatural agency, such an island was peopled, we should be bound to believe it, however incredible it might appear in the estimation of human calculation; for what, beside that which involves an absolute impossibility, or a manifest contradiction, is beyond the reach of omnipotent power?

After stating several theories which have been adopted to account for the manner in which these islands of the Pacific were first peopled, Mr. Ellis gives the following as, in his opinion, the most probable:

On the other hand, it is easy to imagine how they could have proceeded from the east. The winds would favor their passage, and the incipient stages of civilization in which they were found would resemble the condition of the aborigines of America far more than that of the Asiatics. There are many well-authenticated accounts of long voyages performed in native vessels by the inhabitants of both the North and South Pacific. In 1696 two canoes were driven from Ancarso to one of the Philippine Islands, a distance of eight hundred miles. 66 They had run before the wind for seventy days together, sailing from east to west." Thirty-five had embarked, but five had died from the effects of privation and fatigue during the voyage, and one shortly after their arrival. In 1720 two canoes were drifted from a remote distance to one of the Marian Islands. Captain Cook found in the island of Wateo Atiu inhabitants of Tahiti, who had been drifted by contrary winds in a canoe, from some islands to the eastward, unknown to the natives. Several parties have, within the last few years, reached the Tahitian shores from islands to the eastward, of which the people of the Society Islands had never before heard. In 1820 a canoe arrived at Maurua, about thirty miles west of Borabora, which had come from Rurutu, one of the Austral Islands. This vessel had been at sea between a fortnight and three weeks, and considering its route, must have sailed seven or eight hundred miles. A more recent instance occurred in 1824: a boat belonging to Mr. Williams of Raiatea, left that island with a westerly wind for Tahiti. The wind changed after the boat was out of sight of land. They were driven to the island of Atiu, a distance of nearly eight hundred miles in a south-westerly direction, where they were discovered several months afterward. Another boat, belonging to Mr. Barff, of Huahine, was passing between that island and Tahiti about the same time, and has never since been heard of; and subsequent instances of equally distant and perilous voyages in canoes or open boats might be cited. The traditions of the inhabitants of Rarotogna, one of the Harvey Islands, preserve the most satisfactory accounts, not only of single parties, at different periods for many generations back, having arrived there from the Society Islands, but also derive the origin of the population from the island of Raiatea. Their traditions, according with those of the Raiateans on the leading points, afford the strongest evidence of these islands having been peopled from those to the eastward.

If we suppose the population of the South Sea Islands to have proceeded from east to west, these events illustrate the means by which

it may have been accomplished; for it is a striking fact that every such voyage related in the accounts of voyagers, preserved in the traditions of the natives, or of recent occurrence, has invariably been from east to west, directly opposite to that in which it must have been, had the population been altogether derived from the Malayan archipelago.

From whatever source, however, they have originated, the extent of geographical surface over which they have spread themselves, the variety, purity, and copiousness of their language, the ancient character of some of the best traditions, as of the deluge, &c, justify the supposition of their remote antiquity. Yet their ignorance of letters, of the use of iron till a short time prior to their discovery, and the rude character of all their implements, and of the monuments of their ancestry, seem opposed to the idea of their having been derived, as supposed by some eminent modern geographers, from an ancient powerful nation, which cultivated maritime habits, but which has been frittered down into detached local communities unknown to each other.'

How much we are indebted to the light of revelation for the knowledge of the true God, the Creator of all things, we can best calculate by contrasting the lucid but laconic account furnished us by Moses, with the mystical, confused, and often contradictory accounts found among the various pagan nations. Moses introduces the Almighty as having existed anterior to all created beings and things, and as simply saying, Let there be light, earth, seas, beasts and reptiles, and it was done. He spake and it stood fast' He stretcheth the north over the empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.' In the belief of this sublime truth, thus clearly expressed, the mind rests with a sort of reverential delight. But when we turn to the fabulous legends of pagan mythology, all is wrapt up in mystery, involved in obscurity, or rendered incredible by its absurdity and contradictory cha

racter.

While, however, we are satisfied with the luminous account of the origin of all things furnished us in the sacred Scriptures, we derive still increasing satisfaction from contrasting it with those accounts found in the records of pagan history. But even in these crude and confused notions we think we can perceive some traces of that traditionary knowledge which the several nations of the earth must have received from their remote ancestors, and which they unquestionably derived from the great progenitor of mankind and his immediate descendants. We have been led to these remarks from the following account respecting the origin of the world, and the existence of the supreme and subordinate beings, in which the reader will perceive a striking analogy between these and many other pagan nations on this subject: