28 ETHNOGRAPHY. 



sented their paradise as a very long house, encircled with beautiful 

 shrubs and flowers, which never lost their bloom or fragrance, and 

 whose inmates enjoyed unwithering beauty and unfading youth." 

 The name of the presiding deity of this abode was Tiki. At the 

 Sandwich Islands the natives held opinions very nearly the same as 

 those of the Society Islanders ; the spirits of the dead either went to 

 the po, or place of night, and were eaten by the gods, or they de- 

 scended to the regions below, where Atea and Milu, the first sove- 

 reigns of Hawaii, had their kingdom. It should be observed, that in 

 the dialects of all the islands, except New Zealand, the words below, 

 keward, and westward, are synonymous. Those accounts, therefore, 

 which represent the abode of spirits as a subterranean hades, and 

 those which make it a terrestrial paradise, lying to the westward, 

 have probably a common origin, and owe their difference to the dif- 

 ferent acceptations of the same word. 



CIVIL POLITY. 



A very simple form of society exists in all the Polynesian islands. 

 There are usually three classes or ranks, chiefs, landholders, and 

 common people. In New Zealand, however, the first is wanting, 

 and in the Sandwich Islands the second. The relative powers of 

 the three classes also vary at the different groups. On this subject it 

 will be necessary to enter into some particulars. 



At the Navigator Islands the government is nominally, and in part 

 actually in the hands of the whole body of alii, or chiefs. But their 

 power is not arbitrary. The householders (tulafales} of a district are 

 the recognised councillors of the chief, and he seldom takes any im- 

 portant step without consulting them. It is not uncommon for a 

 chief, whose course is displeasing to the people of his district, to be 

 deposed by the united action of the landholders and the neighbouring 

 chiefs, and another appointed to his office. The common people are, 

 in general, the relatives and dependants of the tulafales, and have no 

 direct influence in the government. 



Of chiefs there are three grades, not distinguished by particular 

 titles, but by the terms which are used in speaking of or to them. 

 Two or three of the highest, whose influence extends over the whole 

 group, are of the first rank. Their near relatives, and the rulers of 

 large districts form the second. The third comprises the petty chiefs 

 of single towns, whose power will vary of course with the number of 



