1777- THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 155 



knowledge is confined to particular people. Omai 

 pretended to have this gift. He told us, that the 

 soul of his father had intimated to him in a dream, 

 on the 26th of July, 177o> that he should go on 

 shore, at some place, within three days ; but he was 

 unfortunate in this first attempt to persuade us that 

 he was a prophet; for it was the 1st of August 

 before we got into TeneritFe. Amongst them, how- 

 ever, the dreamers possess a reputation little inferior 

 to that of their inspired priests and priestesses, whose 

 predictions they implicitly believe, and are determined 

 by them in all undertakings of consequence. The 

 priestess who persuaded Opoony to invade Ulietea, 

 is much respected by him ; and lie never goes to war 

 without consulting her. They also, in some degree, 

 maintain our old doctrine of planetary influence ; at 

 least, they are sometimes regulated, in their public 

 counsels, by certain appearances of the moon ; par- 

 ticularly when lying horizontally, or much inclined 

 on the convex part, on its first appearance after the 

 change, they are encouraged to engage in war, with 

 confidence of success. 



They have traditions concerning the creation, 

 which, as might be expected, are complex, and 

 clouded with obscurity. They say, that a goddess, 

 having a lump or mass of earth suspended in a cord, 

 gave it a swing, and scattered about pieces of land, 

 thus constituting Otaheite, and the neighbouring 

 islands, which were all peopled by a man and a wo- 

 man originally fixed at Otaheite. This, however, 

 only respects their own immediate creation ; for they 

 have notions of an universal one before this ; and of 

 lands, of which they have now no other knowledge 

 than what is mentioned in the tradition. Their most 

 remote account reaches to Tatooma and Tapuppa, male 

 and female stones or rocks, who support the congeries 

 of land and water, or our globe underneath. These 

 produced Totorro, who was killed, and divided into 

 land ; and, after him, Otaia and Oroo were begotten, 



