464 PROCEEDINGS OP SECTION F. 



sayeth the Maori. Likewise, a person about to start on a journey to- 

 distant parts would go through a similar perforaiance, in order that 

 the evil spells of enemies might be rendered hamdess, or " toothless," 

 as my informant put it. 



But the female organ Avas black death and destruction, for it was 

 this that brought death into the world. 



We have not given a tithe of the items that should be described 

 under the heading that this little paper bears, but He aha koa! The 

 days are many that lie before. 



I have often asked old natives the reason why their fathers gave 

 up the practice of their ancient religion and accepted Christianity. 

 Their answers were prompt and plain. It was because of the superior 

 powers of the white man's G-od. A deity whose subjects could acquire 

 wi-itten language, make guns and numloerless other wondrous things, 

 nuist be one worth cultivating; the igiiorant Maori people might gain 

 nuicli from him. 



A final word. Wlien a Maori died, his spirit (WAIRUA) was 

 supposed to leave the body and fare forth to the Spirits' Leaping Place,, 

 situated at the north-west, extremity of the North Island of New Zea- 

 land, where it leaped into the ocean and descended to the undei-world. 

 This abode of the dead nuich resembled that of the ancient Hebrews.. 

 It was a realm wherein the spirits of the dead seemed to live much the 

 same sort of life as they did in the upper- world. The accounts given, 

 however, are not by any means definite in statement, and do not 

 agree. There was no form of belief in any system of rewards oi* 

 punishments in the spirit land, no judging of the soul by an. Osiris or 

 Jehovah. 



At the same time spirits of the dead were believed to remain near 

 tlieir old homes in this world, where they often caused much trouble 

 by annoying the living. No effort is made whereby to reconcile these 

 two statements. 



3.— EARLY ARABIA AND OCEANIA. 



By Bev. Dr. McDONALD. 



As is now no longer disputed, there are in Oceania about. 

 50,000,000 of islanders whose languages all belong to one stock. 

 These languages are a perfectly well-defined family, called the Oceanic, 

 and are admittedly descended from one original mother-tongue. Of 

 the Oceanic there are four well-known branches — the Malagasy, the 

 Malaysian, the Polynesian, and the Melanesian : these are independent 

 branches — that is, they are not derived any one from any other of 

 thern, but only all from the same source. The speakers of these 

 languages are widely scattered in the islands of the Indian and Pacific 

 Oceans. From Madagascar, on the westera side of the Indian Ocean, 

 off the coast of Africa, to Easter Island, in the Pacific, is more than 

 half the circumference of the globe. The Oceanic occupies, as it were, 

 the middle region between Asia, Africa, Australia, and America, but 

 it is not related to the African, Australian, or American aboriginal 

 languages. On this ground it may be held as certain that the 

 s;peakers of the Oceanic mother-tongue did not cariy their speech from 

 any of these three continents into the island world. Whether they 

 carried it into the island world from Asia can only be determined,. 



