The Otaheitians, more advanced in civilization, have also more extended ideas of the divinity. They worship a supreme deity whose wife is material and corporeal, and of a nature therefore entirely different from his own.
They gave birth to a class of supernatural beings, which correspond with the inferior divinities of other Mythologies, from one of whom, sprang the three persons, forming the Trinity peculiar to this people; of these one is the creator, and lord of the starry hemisphere; another is the Neptune of their seas, the next watches over the hurricanes which sweep along the Pacific Ocean, and presides over the winds.
But the mode in which they account for the formation of the numerous islands for which the place is remarkable, is not the least curious of their beliefs.
One of their divinities, they say, took his wife, and threw her with so strong an arm into the Sea, that she fell to the bottom, and by the force of the concussion was broken into pieces. As she rebounded, lacerated, and divided into myriads of fragments of all sizes, they turned into the rocks, the shoals, and the numerous isles of Polynesia. An enormous fragment floated to the East, and formed America.
The principal goddess of the Sandwich islands, is remarkable chiefly for her hideous appearance. The face is tatooed, the nostrils are enormous, and her eyes, which are so small they are scarcely to be seen, resemble a leaf of laurel. Along her mouth are spread rows of teeth, which from the sharpness of their appearance, might belong to a wild beast, the neck is of an immense thickness; and the whole appearance is one which may vie in frightfulness with any deity or demon of this idolatrous people.
Our task is now closed; the religions of those who have gone before us, have been given with as much accuracy as the lapse of
ages has permitted. We have sought the hidden beauties of poetry, to aid us in our endeavours, and to render them palatable to our readers; to those who have accompanied us in our wanderings; to those who have been with us among the elegant reminiscences of the Greek mythology, and followed us to the more painful and revolting creed of the American, we can only say, that we hope to them, as to us, the subject has excited interest, and that a perusal of the fables we have been able to lay before them, may induce them to take a greater interest, and place a higher value on that faith, and on those truths which are set before them in the word of the One Great God.
With the following lines of the lamented L. E. L. we shall close our work, not doubting that our readers will perceive and appreciate their beauty.
————————"The days
Of visible poetry have long been past!—