80 REV. M. EELLS, ON THE WORSHU' AND TRADITIONS OF 



deluge that have been given do not necessarily belong to the 

 deluge that Noah was saved from. There have been these sub- 

 mergences, no doubt, all over the world, and we cannot lay down 

 exactly to whicb inundation, or change in the surface of the 

 earth, they refer. We do not know how white people have been 

 brought amongst these people in the Pacific and Australia. In 

 the middle of Australia a white tribe has spread which evidently 

 sprung from a mixture of race. 



There is another thing in this paper, to which I might refer, 

 about a legend in connection with Cain and Abel. " The ti'adition 

 among the Tongas has a strong Biblical element in it, also a Cain 

 and Abel, the blacks being descended from Cain and the whites 

 from Abel." Before seeing white men hoAv could this tradition 

 ever have existed ? It has evidently been borrowed from the 

 white people ; but at Tonga they could not know anything about 

 white people till they had seen them. Of course the natives of 

 the Society Islands, New Zealand, and the Sandwich Islands are 

 all distinct races by themselves. They may be mixed vv^ith races 

 of the north ; but they have their own traditions which are ver}^ 

 distinct, no doubt. I think the traditions amongst these natives 

 are to be received with much caution, and they cannot all be 

 received as being distinct traditions. I was in Fiji, one of the 

 most savage spots on the face of the earth. The religion of that 

 island I should say was the sacrifice of human beings for the 

 purpose of food. If they|wanted food the king always had a 

 professional butcher who went about at night, and if he found a 

 man out of his hut at night he would knock him on the head and 

 bring him in for food. I mean, to talk of religion amongst people 

 of that kind seems very unsatisfactory. 



Professor Orchard. — I am sure we are much obliged to the 

 author for having shown us the " inside kernel," as he aptly calls 

 it, of the religions of these Pacific island aborigines. The idea of 

 God is, surely, not altogether necessarily synonymous with the 

 idea of the God of the Christians. One man may think of God as 

 a great spirit. The idea of another man about Him may be that 

 He is a Power working for righteousness. The idea of another 

 may be that He is the ultimate absolute reality behind all 

 phenomena. Surely one cannot say that none of those men had 

 any idea of God, Their God might not indeed be the true God of 

 the Bible. The idea of tlie future would seem also to be innate. 



