THE ABORIGINES OF THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 79 



the dark and a belief in the spirits of evil. I suppose the writer 

 of the paper, when he speaks of the Papnas, that is a black race 

 in New Guinea, had not the opportunity of heainng Sir Wm. 

 Macgregor's paper read the other: day before a public institute, or 

 he would probably have a little better opinion of those natives 

 than that expressed in his paper. 



There is one thing about all these natives — if you ask a native 

 about any subject and he gets the slightest idea of the kind of 

 answer you want, he w^ill give you that answer, and unless you put 

 a question to him in an indirect way, so as not to convey to him 

 the slightest idea of what is in your mind, you will not get an 

 independent statement from him at all, and I think many of those 

 statements that are got from the natives are obtained in that 

 way. Though degraded they are very sharp in some ways, and 

 pick up language easily, and the children are sharp and easily 

 educated. 



In regard to the deluge I believe people nowadays do not think 

 that the deluge was universal — all over the world at the same 

 time. There may be those who think that ; but I think the 

 majority of people do not think it necessary from the Bible state- 

 ment of the deluge to believe more than that those living in the 

 world at the time must have been swept away, while there were 

 other parts of the world where there were no inhabitants. If 

 you look at the south-east corner of the Pacific you will find an 

 island which is a mountain peak and has I think about 1,500 

 inhabitants. It is very high land — I do not remember how high 

 now, but it is of considerable elevation. On that island terraces 

 are cut out from the mountain and on those terraces there is a 

 series of statues of kings weighing about eight tons each. One 

 of these was brought home in H.M.S. " Comus " and weighed 

 eight tons. Work of this kind could not have been done on a 

 little island with only 1,500 inhabitants, and they would not have 

 a series of kings. They say they are not gods or idols, but 

 statues of kings, and therefore I have no doubt that this island 

 was part of a continent that existed in that part of the world 

 many years ago. We have exactly the same in the Atlantic, 

 about which Plato handed down the legend of the island, which 

 he said was submerged many years before. To me this island in 

 the south-east corner of the Pacific is evidence that a large tract 

 of land has been submerged there. The various reports of the 



