17^9. ROUND THE WORLD. ^35 



inconsistencies. The religious language is also here, as 

 it is in China, different from that which is used in com- 

 mon, so that Tupia, who took great pains to instruct 

 us, having no words to express his meaning which 

 we understood, gave us lectures to very little purpose : 

 what we learnt, however, I will relate with as much 

 perspicuity as I can. 



Nothing is more obvious to a rational being, how- 

 ever ignorant or stupid, than that the universe and 

 its various parts, as far as they fall under his notice, 

 were produced by some agent inconceivably more 

 powerful than himself; and nothing is more difficult 

 to be conceived, even by the most sagacious and 

 knowing, than the production of them from nothing, 

 which among us is expressed by the word Creation. 

 It is natural, therefore, as no Being apparently capable 

 of producing the universe is to be seen, that he 

 should be supposed to reside in some distant part of 

 it, or to be in his nature invisible, and that he should 

 have originally produced all that now exists in a 

 manner similar to that in which nature is renovated 

 by the succession of one generation to another ; but 

 the idea of procreation includes in it that of two 

 persons, and from the conjunction of two persons 

 these people imagine every thing in the universe, 

 either originally or derivatively, to proceed. 



The Supreme Deity, one of these two first beings, 

 they call Taroataihetoomoo, and the other, whom 

 they suppose to have been a rock, Tepapa. A daughter 

 of these was Tettowmatatayo, the year, or thirteen 

 months collectively, which they never name but upon 

 this occasion, and she, by the common father, pro- 

 duced the months, and the months, by conjunction 

 with each other, the days ; the stars they suppose 

 partly to be the immediate offspring of the first pair, 

 and partly to have increased among themselves ; and 

 they have the same notion with respect to the dif- 

 ferent species of plants. Among other progeny of 

 Taroataihetoomoo and Tepapa, they suppose an in- 



