300 HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AND MYTHS OF OBSERVATION. 



ditions is due to their being commonly preserved in verses 

 kept alive by frequent repetition, and in whicli even small 

 events are placed on record witb an accuracy and permanence 

 that yields only to written history. Thus a question that arose 

 when Ellis was in Tahiti, about a certain buoy that was stolen 

 from the ' Bounty' nearly thirty years before, was settled at 

 once by a couple of lines from a native song. 



" O mea eia e Tareu eia 



Eia te poito a Bligli." 

 " Such a one a thief, and Tareu a thief. 



Stole the buoy of Bligh.'" 



Among the mass of Central American traditions which have 

 become known through the labours of the Abbe Brasseur, 

 there occur certain passages in the story of an early migration 

 of the Quiche race, which have much the appearance of vague 

 and broken stories derived in some way from high northern 

 latitudes. The Quiche manuscript describes the ancestors of 

 the race as travelling away from the rising of the sun, and 

 goes on thus : — " But it is not clear how they crossed the sea, 

 they passed as though there had been no sdk, for they passed 

 over scattered rocks, and these rocks were rolled on the sands. 

 This is why they called the place ' ranged stones and torn-up 

 sands,' the name which they gave it on their passage within 

 the sea, the water being divided when they passed." Then 

 the people collected on a mountain called Chi Pixab, and there 

 they fasted in darkness and night. Afterwards it is related 

 that they removed, and waited for the dawn which was ap- 

 proaching, and the manuscript says : — " Now, behold, our 

 ancients and our fathers were made lords and had their dawn ; 

 behold, we will relate also the rising of the dawn and the ap- 

 parition of the sun, the moon, and the stars." Great was their 

 joy when they saw the morning star, which came out first with 

 its resplendent face before the sun. At last the sun itself 

 began to come forth ; the animals, small and great, were in joy ; 

 they rose from the watercourses and ravines, and stood on the 

 mountain tops with their heads towards where the sun was 



- ' Ellis, Polyn. Kes., toI. i. p. 287. 



