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304 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 
all occasions to assert their equality with the highest. They frequently 
observe on being asked to work, ‘* White fellow works, not black fel- 
low ; black fellow gentleman.” 
It is not true, as has been frequently asserted, that the natives have 
no idea of a Supreme Being, although they do not allow this idea to in- 
fluence their actions. The Wellington tribe, at least, believe in the ex- 
istence of a deity called Baiamai, who lives on an island beyond the 
great sea to the east. His food is fish, which come up to him from the 
water when he calls to them. Some of the natives consider him the 
maker of all things, while others attribute the creation of the world to 
his son Burambin. They say of him, Baiamai spoke, and Burambin | 
came into existence. A being, beyond question, of the creation of 
Australian imagination, is one who is called in the Wellington dialect 
Wandong, though the natives have learned from the whites to apply to 
him the name of devil. He is an object not of worship, but merely of 
superstitious dread. They attribute all their afflictions to his malevo- 
lence. If they are ill, they say Wandong has bitten them. No one 
can see this being but the nuyargir or conjurors, who assert that they 
can kill him, but that he always returns to life. He may however be 
frightened away by throwing fire at him, and no native will go out at 
night without a firebrand to protect him from the demon. At the Mur- 
ruya river, the devil is called Tulugal. He was described to us by a 
native as a black man of great stature, grizzled with age, who has very 
long legs, so that he soon overtakes a man, but very short arms, which 
brings the contest nearer an equality. This goblin has a wife, who is 
much like himself, but still more feared, being of a cruel disposition, 
with a cannibal appetite, especially for young children. It would hard- 
ly be worth while to dwell upon these superstitions, but that they seem 
to characterize so distinctly the people, at once timid, ferocious and 
stupid, who have invented them. . 
2. Origin of the Polynesians; (ibid.)—The Polynesians extend 
over the Pacific Ocean, from the Sandwich Islands on the north to New 
Zealand on the south, an interval of 3700 miles, and occupy all the 
groups east of a line between these distant islands, excepting the Fee- 
jees. Mr. H. Hale in his account of the ethnography of those seas, 
_ shows satisfactorily that the original site or mother country from which | 
migration took place, to the other parts of this extent of ocean, is the 
region of the Navigators (or Samoan) and Friendly Islands. The 
Society Islands and Rarotonga were settled direct from Samoa. The 
Gambier Islands from Samoa through Rarotonga. The Marquesas from 
the Friendly Islands and Samoa through Tahiti. The Sandwich Islands 
from Samoa through the Marquesas and Tahiti. New Zealand from 
Samoa. The Kingsmills from Samoa to the southeast, and from Ban- 
= es 
