144 THE POLYNESIAN WANDERINGS. 



own word in its new guise. In effect I set before the individual the 

 task which has proved easy to his race.* 



For each of the languages of sufficient representation I have tabu- 

 lated the results of this examination and have set them down in the 

 foregoing tables. Employing the sum of these several elements as 

 dividend, and for divisor the whole number of words in the available 

 material which have been identified as Polynesian, we obtain a 

 figure which stands for the quality of the resemblance of each lan- 

 guage with the Proto-Samoan, and this coefficient of quality has 

 been inserted in its proper place in the tables. 



Now for the graphic presentation of the results. Upon the chart 

 of the island-studded ocean between the termini of Indonesia and 

 Polynesia, respectively, we insert these coefficients of quality and 

 delimit the areas of equal resemblance. 



*Not a single detail of such westward drift and its result can be lacking in interest 

 to us. Therefore I note the following double instance from the Rev. John Inglis's 

 "In the New Hebrides" (page 33) : 



"On Aneityum the idols were all, like the Jewish altars, of uncarved, unhewn 

 stones. The only exception to this which we ever found was in the case of Tuatau, 

 a natmas which I found at Anauunse and took home with me. Tuatau was of wood, 

 a piece of a breadfruit tree. Like the idolaters mentioned by the prophet, the maker 

 of this idol had chosen a tree that will not rot. It was a rudely shaped, uncouth 

 figure, its countenance only very slightly resembling the human face divine. I was 

 struck with its being made of wood, and afterwards learned that it was not a native 

 idol— it was of foreign manufacture. It had a little history of its own, which may serve 

 to illustrate that of ' the image which fell down from Jupiter '(Acts xix, 35). About the 

 beginning of this [the nineteenth] century as nearly as native chronology supplied me 

 with the date on which to calculate, in the days of Tuatau, a great chief of Anauunse, 

 this poor idol was one morning found drifted ashore by the northeast wind. How long 

 it had been tossed upon the ocean nobody knew. But as it bore all the marks of a 

 Malay idol [Dr. Inglis thus denominates the Polynesians], and was very like the fisher- 

 man's god of Rarotonga, as given in Williams's ' Missionary Enterprises' and which, he 

 says, 'was placed on the forepart of every fishing canoe; and when the natives were 

 going on a fishing excursion, prior to setting off they invariably presented offerings to 

 the god, and invoked him to grant success' — it seemed highly probable that this idol 

 was a Rarotongan fisherman's god— that the canoe on which it was borne had been 

 wrecked— that the poor fishermen had been drowned— and that the idol had been drifted 

 along before the tradewinds till it was cast ashore on Aneityum. But, be that as it 

 may have been, its subsequent history was well enough known. Among a people 

 remarkablv unskilled in the pictorial arts, its faint resemblance to the human form 

 secured for it favor and veneration. The day on which it was found was one on which 

 Tuatau was making a great feast. The natmasses were always closely connected with 

 the feasts. It was one of the fundamental articles in the creed of heathenism on Anei- 

 tyum that the man who made the largest feasts and who presented the most costly 

 offerings to the natmasses was the man that most effectually propitiated their favor. 

 The sacred men all declared that the natmasses had made this image and brought it to 

 Tuatau; and the chief and the ignorant populace accepted the statement as readily, and 

 believed it as firmly, as the Asiarchs and the idolaters of Ephesus believed that the ugly 

 little statue, made of ebony and vine wood by Canetias, was, as the priests of Diana 

 affirmed it to be, 'the image that fell down from Jupiter.' The chief received it as a 

 token of the special favor of the natmasses, placed it within the sacred enclosure, and 

 thenceforth regarded it as his tutelary divinity. After the death of Tuatau the idol 

 received his name, and was supposed to be watching over his spirit; and it continued 

 to be worshipped till Christianity was accepted in Anauunse. 



"Had the idol been a man — a shipwrecked sailor, or one of the poor fishermen on the 

 prow of whose canoe it sat conspicuous as Castor and Pollux did in the ship that carried 

 Paul — to a certainty he had been killed, and most probably also eaten; at least a ship- 

 wrecked sailor met with this sad fate at Eromanga within less than a twelvemonth of 

 the time when Tuatau fell into my hands; but being a block of wood, shaped so as to 

 have a faint resemblance to a man, it was set up and worshipped as a god." 



