To celebrate God’s act, the priests of Polynesia blessed waters for purification, for prayer, and for public and private ceremonies, and to exorcise demons and drive away diseases, as the priests of America and Europe do. Holy water was called ka wai kapu a Kane, and from the baptizing of the new-born child to the sprinkling of the dying its sacred uses were many. To-day the older people use these pagan ablutions to alleviate pain and cure maladies. The old Greeks used salt water for the same purposes, and had holy-water fonts at the temple gates, as do the Catholic churches to-day.
Levy and Woronick believed, or pridefully affected to believe, that at a remote period a band of Israelites, perhaps one of the lost tribes carried away by the Assyrians, peopled these islands; or settled in Malaysia before the Polynesian exodus from there, and gave them their lore. Père Rambaud of the Catholic mission at Papeete considered it more probable that Spaniards, reaching Hawaii from wrecked Spanish galleons voyaging between Mexico and Manila, brought the holy doctrines. His explanation, however, often advanced, fell utterly before the fact that the Polynesians had no knowledge of Jesus or any man or god like him, and knew nothing of original sin; but, more convincing, all Polynesia had these legends, and there had been no communication with the Maoris of New Zealand and with Fiji after the Spanish entered the Philippines. It is to me quite certain that the Polynesians brought with them from Malaysia or India or from farther toward Europe those traditions of the beginnings of mankind which grew up hundreds of thousands of years ago, and were dispersed with each group setting out for adventure or driven from the birthplace of thinking humans.
Taaroa, whose name was spelt differently in separated archipelagos, was the father of the Tahitian cosmogony. His wife was Hina, the earth, and his son, Oro, was ruler of the world. Tané, the Huahine god, was a brother of Oro, and his equal, but there were islands which disputed this equality, and shed blood to disprove it, as the sects of Christianity have since the peaceful Jesus died by the demands of the priests of his nation.
Haui was the Tahitian Hercules. Of course he, too, bade the sun to stay a while unmoving, and it did. Joshua, the son of Nun, whose astronomical exploit at Gibeon brought him immortal fame, was a glorious warrior; but Haui’s unwritten achievements, as chanted by the orero at the marae where Tetuanui, Brooke, and I stood, would have forced the successor of Moses to have withdrawn his book from circulation, as too dull.
The Polynesian creator put on earth hogs, dogs, and reptiles. There were many kinds of dogs in their mythology, including the “large dog with sharp teeth,” and the “royal dog of God.” Among reptiles was Moo, a terrible dragon living in caverns above and beneath the sea, who was dreaded above all dangers. He was to them the monster that guarded the Hesperides garden, and the beast that St. George slew; but as the common lizard was the largest reptile in Polynesia, this, too, was an heirloom from another land. In the old Havaii—probably Java—they must have known those fierce crocodiles that I have seen drag down a horse drinking in the river at Palawan, and noted swimming in the open sea between Siassi and Borneo.
The chief and Brooke and I sat in the shade of the etoa-trees, and conversed about these ancient stories. Fixed in the mind of the race by the repetition of ages, they are the most difficult of all errors to erase, and the professors of this wisdom stamp it upon the heart and brain of the child in almost indelible colors, and make it tabu, sacrilege, or treason to deny its verity. Half a century ago repairs became necessary to Mohammed’s tomb at Medina, and masons were asked to volunteer to make them, and submit to beheading immediately after. There was no lack of desirous martyrs. One descended into the mausoleum, finished the task, and, reaching the air again, knelt, turned his face toward Mecca, and bent his head for the ax. The Mussulman keepers of the tomb justified their act, as, the forbidding telling the truth about religion and government, about war and business, is justified. Their words were:
“We picture those places to ourselves in a certain manner, and for the preservation of our holy religion, and the safety of society, there must not be any one who can say they are otherwise.”
It was noon when Brooke and I—Tetuanui having gone to instruct his gang—plunged into the sea in front of the chefferie, and laughed in the joy of the sweet hour. He had written lines of beauty that interpreted our humor:
Tau here, Mamua,
Crown the hair, and come away!
Hear the calling of the moon,
And the whispering scents that stray
About the idle warm lagoon.
Hasten, hand in human hand,
Down the dark, the flowered way,
Along the whiteness of the sand,
And in the water’s soft caress
Wash the mind of foolishness,
Mamua, until the day.
Spend the glittering moonlight there,
Pursuing down the soundless deep
Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair;
Or floating lazy, half-asleep.
Dive and double and follow after,
Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call,
With lips that fade, and human laughter
And faces individual!
Well this side of Paradise! ...
There ’s little comfort in the wise.