The inhabitants of Polynesia, are, like all those whose faith is primitive
and simple, devoted to the worship of the Sun, which they regard as a
divinity; and which they imagine at one time to have been a human being:
they believe he married his sister, who, when all the rest of her family
came upon earth, remained by herself in the skies, and from their union
sprang the months.
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 {292} 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!--
No fear that the young hunter may profane
The haunt of some immortal,--but there still--
For the heart clings to old idolatry,
If not with true belief with tenderness--
Lingers a spirit in the woods and flowers
Which have a Grecian memory,--Some tale
Of olden love, or grief, linked with their bloom,
Seem beautiful beyond all other ones.
The marble pillars are laid in the dust,
The golden shrine and its perfume are gone
But there are natural temples still for those
Eternal, tho' dethroned deities,
Where from green altars, flowers send up their incense."