344 THE CORAL LANDS Of THE PACIFIC. 



The people of the island of Nanomea are a race of giants ; 

 they average quite 6 feet in height, and are proportionately 

 muscular. When Mr. Whitmee visited the group, ten years 

 ago, he was asked condescendingly, ' Why the whites were all 

 such little men ?' his interrogator adding that ' they looked as 

 if they wanted a good meal.' 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



POLYNESIAN TRADITIONS. 



ALL the traditions of the. origin of the world that I heard 

 of in the Pacific agree in one particular ; viz., that ' in the 

 beginning ' the earth ' was void and empty, and darkness was 

 on the face of the deep.' The Samoans say that that being 

 the case, a certain Jupiter of their mythology sent from heaven 

 his daughter in the form of a snipe to find dry land. After 

 many unsuccessful visits one bare rock furnished a resting- 

 place for this weary wanderer. Repeated descents of the bird- 

 disguised goddess still found the same rock barren, till her 

 father at length deigned to send a little earth and a small 

 creeping-plant to furnish the tiny continent, Watched care- 

 fully by the supernatural snipe, the plant was found to have 

 got withered and was replaced by worms. Anyone who has 

 noticed the important part which the earth-worm plays in the 

 breaking up of the pent subsoil of a garden, or has read a 

 recent work on the formation of vegetable mould by the 

 late Dr. Darwin, will find no difficulty in seeing how the 

 Samoans made their connection between the weed and the 

 worm. In fact this tradition is simply a rude account of what 

 we know does take place when naked rocks first exposed to 



