oo Transactions.—Miscellaneous. 
derivation of the Maoris, except so far as he has shewn in his able comparison 
of the Malagasi, Malay and Tongan languages, I think that there are certain 
customs prevalent among all or most of the Polynésian Islands, which peculiar 
to or characteristic of them, do tend decidedly to shew that they were once one 
people. Thus there is, or has been, in most of them, the worship of a Supreme 
Being, Tangaloa generally, in New Zealand, Maui, and what is remarkable 
an almost total absence of Temples, or of anything but the rudest form of 
Idols. At Tahiti, indeed, and in the Sandwich Islands, coarse wooden 
figures, which served for such, are noticed in the early missionary narratives. 
In the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford there is one in stone said to have been 
brought from Raiatea ; and the curious Colossal figures from Easter Island, 
two of which have lately been set up in the British Museum, may, very 
probably, have been worshipped by the original population, a different race 
from the present inhabitants, and perhaps, as has been supposed, of 
Mexican origin. There seems, also, to have been in Tahiti certain sacred 
precincts not unlike the old Greek Temenos,* The majority of the Gods, 
however, were deified early chiefs: much as, in ancient Greece, the hero and 
the God were often nearly connected together. There is, also, much 
similiarity in the accounts given of the origin of the different islands ; that 
of the Tongans, that they were fished up from the bottom of the sea being 
a likely story enough for people situated in a vast ocean like the Pacific. 
In several of the Islands, their Paradise is placed in the far west. Is this 
an indication of the traditional history of their emigration ? Mr. Logan 
has also pointed out that the leading chiefs, generally bore a title, variously 
pronounced Alihi, ali’t or ari’i.t Thus in Maori, ariki or whaka-ariki means 
a man of high or ancient hereditary descent, and one, therefore, clothed 
with a peculiar sanctity. My. Mariner gives many interesting details of the 
Religion of the Tongans, before Christianity, and much similiar information 
may be gleaned from Ellis’s Polynesian researches—such as the institution 
of what he calls the Areoi, a set of wandering players—who devoted them- 
selves to every kind of debauchery—were hated by the agricultural people 
whom they plundered—but upheld by the chiefs—and, generally, looked up 
* There are several words in Hawaian for image as Tii (in the Dictionary Ki) as Kii 
akua (Ti atua) He kii, etc. The last is, probably the same as the Maori Heitiki— 
a charm worn round the neck. In the sacred precincts, animals constantly, and human 
beings, occasionally, were sacrificed, to please the good or to appease the evil Spirits. 
tBut to suppose as Mr. Logan further does (Journ. Ind. Arch.,” Vol. IV. p. 355, and 
are) shat Aliki, etc. is the same as the Indo-European “ Aryans” seems to sn something 
like Philology run mad. On such a principle any thing may be derived from any thing 
as poaka from the English “ pig,” or « pork,” or “ kuri” from “ eur.” 
