HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AND MYTHS OF OBSERVATION. 319 



him, but, strange to say, though in his anger he drowned the 

 rest of the inhabitants of the land in the deluge, he allowed 

 the fisherman himself to find safe refuge with his wife and child 

 on a small, low, coral island close to Raiatea, and they re- 

 peopled the earth. How the little island was preserved they 

 give no account, but they appeal to the farero, coral, and shells, 

 found at the tops of the highest mountains, as proof of the 

 inundation.^ In Samoa it is the universal belief that of old 

 the fish swam where the land now is, and tradition adds that 

 when the waters abated, many of the fish of the sea were left 

 on the land, and afterwards were changed into stones. Hence, 

 they say, there are stones in abundance in the bush and among 

 the mountains, which were once sharks, and other inhabit- 

 ants of the deep.^ In the North the Moravian missionary 

 Cranz records that, " The first missionaries found among the 

 Greenlanders a tolerably distinct tradition of the Deluge, of 

 which almost all heathen nations still know something, namely, 

 that the world was once tilted over (umgekantert) and all men 

 were drowned, but some became fire-spirits. The only man 

 who remained alive, smote afterwards with his stick upon the 

 ground, and there came out a woman, with whom he peopled 

 the earth again. They tell, moreover, that far up in the coun- 

 try, where men could never have dwelt, there are found all 

 sorts of remains of fishes, and even bones of whales on a high 

 mountain ; wherefrom they make it clear that the earth was 

 once flooded.^^^ It is interesting to compare this argument 

 with the explanation the Kamchadals give of the bones of 

 whales, which in their country also are found on high moun- 

 tains. They fear all high mountains, says Steller, especially 

 volcanos, and also hot springs, and believe that some moun- 

 tains are the abodes of spirits. " When one asks them what 

 the devils do up there, they reply, ' they cook whales.' I 

 asked, where they got them ? The answer was, they go down 

 to the sea at night and catch so many, that one brings home 

 five to ten of them, one hanging to each finger. When I asked, 

 how do you know this ? they said their StariJd or old people 



' Ellis, Polyu. Ees., vol. ii. p. 58. - Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 249. 



3 Cranz, p. 262. 



