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Untitled Article
the temples demolished , and the sacred houses of the gods , together with their coverings , ornaments , and all the appendages of their worship , come mitted to the flames . The temples , altars , and idols , all round Tahiti , were shortly afterwards destroyed in the same way . The log of wood , called by the natives the body of Oro , into which { hey imagined the god at times enteredy and through whicn his influence was exerted , Pomare ' s party bore away on
their shoulders , and , on returning to the camp , laid it in triumph at their sovereign ' s feet . It was subsequently fixed up as a post in the king ' s kitehen , and used in a most contemptuous manner , and , finally , it was riven up- for fuel . This was the end of the chief idol of the Tahitians , on whom they had supposed their destinies to depend ; whose favour kings and warriors had sought ; whose anger all had deprecated y and who had been the occasion of more bloody and desolating wars , for the preceding thirty years , than all other causes combined . "
Those who wish to see the following remark illustrated and expanded , we refer to Mr . Ellis's pages : •* Traditions of the deluge have been found to exist among the natives of the South-Sea Islands from the earliest periods of their history . " Mr . Hume labours to discredit miracles by adducing the alleged testimony of experience against them . The experience of the natives of these Islands was against the existence of ships without " outriggers , " which are
attached to all their canoes . Ships devoid of this , to them , essential appendage came , and what then was the testimony of their experience worth ? We cite the passage to which we have made allusion . A prophet €€ predicted that in future ages an outriggerless c 9 noe" would arrive in the Islands from some foreign land . Accustomed to attach that appendage to their single canoes , they considered an outrigger essential to their remaining upright upon the water , and consequently could not believe ( on Mr . Hume ' s principle ) that a canoe without one would live at sea . The chiefs and others
to whom Mani delivered his prophecy , were also convinced in their own minds that a canoe would not swim without this necessary balance , and charged him ( on Mr . Hume ' s principle ) with foretelling an impossibility / But when they saw the European vessels , their scepticism departed , and they ** unanimously declared that the prediction of Mani was accomplished , and the canoes without outriggers had arrived . " They have another prophecy from the same source , that a vessel without ropes shall come among them , which Mr . Ellis thinks the visit of a steam-boat would lead the natives to
declare fulfilled . The volumes contain descriptions of natural scenery , as uniform in exciting interest as they are diversified in character . And with all their various beauty , and with no little really fine writing , we never detect the rhetorician . The effect which the passages produce is not the result of art ,
but arises from their being a faithful and unlaboured transcript of the beauties of nature . But engaging as are these pictures , there are others which we prefer ; we allude to the descriptions of moral and religious changes which are either detailed or implied in this interesting and valuable work . But the volumes must be read to obtain any thing like an adequate idea of the change which has been effected .
Untitled Article
Ellis ' s Polynesian Researches . 95
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1831, page 95, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2594/page/23/
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