56 T: ransaétiont.-— Miscellansous. 
A great commercial value, that these islands possess, is the number of 
excellent harbours, that render the products easy of access. 
Many of the coral islands have deep lagoons, which a large ship can 
enter, whilst at the large islands Papiete in Tahiti, Apia and Pangopango, 
in Samoa, and several harbors in the Fijis are centres of trade, where large 
ships receive the products of the adjacent islands, which are conveyed 
thither by schooners and whaleboats. : 
Tt has long been a question where the Polynesians came from, and how 
long they have occupied, the islands of the Pacific. Their traditions were 
eagerly sought to learn something of their past history, and the great object 
was to find some legend that would tell how they had come from Malaysia, 
in spite of contrary winds and currents. But no such tradition was found. 
On the contrary, the accounts of the wise men of Tahiti, as collected by Mr. 
Ellis, agreed in stating that, in ancient times there was a large continent 
(whenua nui), where the islands are now scattered, and that this continent 
was submerged by the anger of the gods ; that a few of the inhabitants were 
saved, and they occupied the sacred places of old times. The island of 
Racabea was the scene of creation, where Oro, and Tangaroa, and Tane 
delighted to visit, and this island contained the palaces of their kings, their 
finest temples, and the chief seat of the priesthood. It was their Delphi 
and centre of the earth. They refused to believe that they had ever come 
from other lands, and in this they differ from nearly every other people. 
These traditions, worthless as they have been thought, agree with the 
account of the formation of atolls, which is now generally received. 
The greater number of atolls lie to the north of a line drawn nearly 
direct from Pitcairn Island, north of the Society, Samoan, and Solomon to 
the Pelew group. Of the 204 islands north of this line, there are thirteen 
high islands. These are Easter Island, eight precipitous islands of Mar- 
quesas, and in the Caroline group, Ualan and Hogelan. 
This shows the greater subsidence of the land near the American coast 
to correspond with the gradual elevation of the whole of that continent. 
The west coast of South America is found to rise, at the rate of nineteen 
feet in 400 years ; but the more extended Pacific area had a much slower 
subsidence. 
As a proof that America has been long oeeupied by man, the remains of 
stone houses are found near the summit of the Andes. Fossil remains of 
pottery and cloth were found on the coast of Chili 85 feet above the sea 
level. Human remains have been found embedded in a coral reef in Florida, 
and also in the delta of the Mississipi, sixteen feet beneath the surface, with 
the remains of four buried forests superimposed. On Easter Island Capt. 
Cook found statues 27 feet high by 8 feet wide, raised on platforms 80 feet 
