178 ETHNOGRAPHY. 



there. " You shall be white, as your mind is good ; you shall also be 

 wise, making axes and all kinds of valuable things, and large canoes. 

 In the mean time, I will tell the wind to blow from your land to 

 Tonga, so that you shall come hither to trade, but your elder brother 

 shall not go to you with his bad canoes." To the elder brother he 

 said, " You shall be black, as your mind is bad, and you shall be 

 destitute ; few good things shall you have, nor shall you go to your 

 brother's land to trade."* 



The natives told this story to account for the difference in color 

 and civilization, between themselves and their European visitors, 

 considering themselves to be the descendants of the elder brother, 

 and the latter of the younger. Mariner was much struck with its 

 singularity, and suspected that it was of modern manufacture, and a 

 corrupted form of the scriptural account of Cain and Abel, learned 

 from some of their foreign visitors ; but he says " the oldest men 

 affirmed their positive belief that it was an ancient traditionary 

 record, and that it was founded in truth." There is certainly no 

 intelligible reason why they should have attempted to deceive him 

 on the point of its antiquity, or been themselves deceived. But if it 

 were really an ancient story, it could not have referred originally to 

 the whites, however it may be applied to them at present. The 

 probability is, as before observed, that it is an ancient mythos, under 

 which the early history of the islanders is veiled, though, in the 

 passage of centuries, the real parts have been forgotten, and the story 

 has received, of late, a new application. The original scene is 

 probably on the Feejee Group. A party of Melanesians, or Papuans, 

 (the elder brother) arrive first at this group, and settle principally on 

 the extensive alluvial plain which stretches along the eastern coast 

 of Viti-levu. Afterwards a second company of emigrants, of the 

 Polynesian race, perhaps from some island in the East Indies, called 

 Bulotu, make their appearance, and finding the western coast (a 

 mountainous and comparatively sterile region) unoccupied, establish 

 themselves upon it. The two thus divide the land between them, 

 and are known to one another as eastern people and western people, 



* See " An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, compiled by J. Martin, M. D., 

 from the communications of William Mariner." Constable's Miscellany, vol. ii. p. 112 

 and Appendix, p. 40, where it is given in the original Tongan. 



