230 FIEEj COOKING, AND VESSELS. 



Curiously enough, within the very work which contains these 

 remarks, particulars are given which show that fire was in 

 reality a familiar thing in the island, Mr. Hale, the ethno- 

 grapher to the expedition, not only mentions the appearance of 

 smoke on the neighbouring Duke of Tork^s Island as being 

 evidence of natives being there, but he gives the name for fire 

 in the language of Fakaafo, afi,^ a most widely-spread Malayo- 

 Polynesian word, corresponding to the Malay form api. Some 

 years later, the Rev. George Turner again mentions this word 

 afiy and gives besides a native story about fire, which is an in- 

 teresting example of the way in which a mere myth may never- 

 theless be a piece of historical evidence. The account which 

 the inhabitants of Fakaafo give of the introduction of fire 

 among themselves is thus related. " The origin of fire they 

 trace to Mafuike, but, unlike the Mafuike of the mythology of 

 some other islands, this was an old blind lady. Talangi went 

 down to her in her lower regions, and asked her to give him 

 some of her fire. She obstinately refused until he threatened 

 to kill her, and then she yielded. With the fire he made her 

 say what fish were to be cooked with it, and what were still to 

 be eaten raw, and then began the time of cooking food." 

 Utter myth as this story is, it yet joins with the evidence of 

 language in bringing the history of the islanders who teU it 

 into connexion with the history of the distant New Zealanders. 

 It belongs to the great Polynesian myth of Maui, who, the New 

 Zealand story says, went away to the dwelling of his great an- 

 cestress Mahuika, and got fire from her.^ And it proves that, 

 even in the past time when these two versions of the story 

 branched off, one to be found in Fakaafo, and the other in New 

 Zealand, the origin of fire must have been already a thing of 

 the forgotten past, or a myth would not have been appHed to 

 explain it. 



In his account of the natives of Fakaafo, Mr. Turner speaks 

 of their recollection of the time when they used fire in felling 

 trees, and he mentions, moreover, some curious native ordi- 



' Hale, Ethnography, etc., of U. S. Exp. ; Philadelphia ed. vol. vi. 1846, 

 pp. 149, 363. 



- Sir G. Grey, 'Polynesian Mythology ;' London, 1855, pp. 45-9. 



