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his wife and child to the place appointed. Some say he took with him a friend who was residing under his roof, with a dog, a pig, and a pair of fowls, so that the party consisted of four individuals, besides the only domesticated animals known in the islands.

They reached the refuge appointed, before the close of the day; and as the sun approached the horizon, the waters of the ocean began to rise, the inhabitants of the adjacent shore left their dwellings on the beach, and fled to the mountains. The waters continued to rise during the night, and the next morning the tops of the mountains only appeared, above the wide-spread surface of the sea. These were afterwards covered, and all the inhabitants of the land perished. The waters subsequently retired, the fisherman and his companions left their retreat, took up their abode on the main land, and became the progenitors of the present inhabitants.

Toamarama, the ark in which those individuals are stated to have been preserved, is a small and low coralline island, of exceedingly circumscribed extent, while its highest parts are not more than two feet above the level of the sea. Whether, on the occasion above referred to, it was raised by Ruahatu to a greater elevation than the summits of the lofty mountains on the adjacent shore, or whether the waters, when, according to their representations, they rose several thousand feet above their present level, formed a kind of cylindrical wall around Toamarama, the natives do not pretend to know, and usually decline discussing this circumstance. Their belief in the event was, however, unshaken; and whenever we have conversed with them on the subject, they have alluded to the farero, coral, shells, and other

marine substances, occasionally found near the surface of the ground, on the tops of their highest mountains. These, they say, would never have been carried there by the people, and could not have originally existed in the situations in which they are now found, but must have been deposited there by the waters of the ocean, when the islands were inundated.-We do not consider these marine substances as evidences that the islands were overflowed at the deluge, but have generally been accustomed to attribute to the whole a formation, if not posterior, yet not of more than equal antiquity with that event. We have usually viewed the coral, shells, &c. which do not appear to be fossils, as indications of the submarine origin of the mountains, and have supposed they were deposited on the rocks, near the surface of which they are now found, when those rocks formed the bed of the ocean, and prior to those violent explosive convulsions by which they were raised to their present elevation, and formed the groups of islands now under consideration.

These are but mere speculative opinions, and however strong the indications of such an origin might appear to our own minds, we could not demonstrate that the different islands now existing had not formerly belonged to one large island. Neither could we shew that they were not the remains of a continent, originally stretching across the Pacific, and uniting Asia and America, which, having been overflowed by the waters of the deluge, might have disappeared after those disruptions had taken place, by which the fountains of the great deep were broken up. Such speculations would have been useless, and we should only have perplexed the minds of the people with our own opinions. In general,

we endeavoured to direct them to the records of that great event preserved in the Scriptures; in the traditionary accounts of which, perpetuated, as they were likely to be, by the descendants of the family of Noah for many generations, their own traditions, with those of the Sandwich Islanders, and other neighbouring tribes, had probably originated. I have frequently conversed with the people on the subject, both in the northern and southern groups, but could never learn that they had any accounts of the windows of heaven having been opened, or the rain having descended. In the legend of Ruahatu, the Toamarama of Tahiti, and the Kai of Kahinarii in Hawaii, the inundation is ascribed to the rising of the waters of the sea. In each account, the anger of the god is considered as the cause of the inundation of the world, and the destruction of its inhabitants. The element employed in effecting it is the same as that mentioned in the Bible; and in the Tahitian tradition, the boat or canoe being used, as the means of safety to the favoured family, and the preservation of the only domestic animals found on the islands, appear corrupted fragments of the memorial of Noah, the ark, and its inmates. These, with other minor points of coincidence between the native traditions and the Mosaic account of the deluge are striking, and warrant the inference, that although the former are deficient in many particulars, and have much that is fabulous in their composition, they yet refer to the same event.

The memorial of an universal deluge, found among all nations existing in those communities, by which civilization, 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 authenticity of revelation. The brief yet satisfactory testimony to this event, preserved in the oral traditions of a people secluded for ages from intercourse with other parts of the world, is adapted to furnish 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 the gentile nations. The mundane egg is conspicuous in the cosmogony of some of the most ancient nations. One of the traditions of the Hawaiians states, that a bird deposited an egg (containing the world in embryo) upon the surface of the primeval waters. If the symbol of the egg be supposed to refer to the creation, and the bird is considered a corrupted memorial of the event recorded in the sacred writings, in which it is said, "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," the coincidence is striking. It is no less so, if it be referred to the ark, floating on the waters of the deluge. The sleep of Ruahatu accords with the slumber of Brama, 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 Kompfer, as existing among th 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 waters of the lake Lleon, and the overwhelming of the face of all lands, and drown

ing all mankind excepting two individuals, who escaped in a naked vessel, (a vessel without sails,) by whom the island of Britain was re-peopled. The safety which the progenitors of the Peruvian 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, and that of the Mexican, in which Coxcox, or Tezpi and his wife, were preserved in a bark, corresponds with the Tahitian tradition. Other points of resemblance between the Polynesian account, and the memorial of the deluge preserved among the ancient nations, might be cited; but these are sufficient to shew the agreement in the testimony to the same event, preserved by the most distant tribes of the human family.

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