ON THE OEiaiN AND MIGEATIONS OP THE POLYNESIAN NATION. 57 



America, there are monolith statues quite as large as those of 

 Copan or Quirigua. Can we doubt then that the Polynesians 

 and Indo-Americans are the same people, and that their fore- 

 fathers carried with them across the vast Pacific and to both of 

 the American continents, the peculiar type of civilization, photo- 

 graphed as it had been upon their minds, that characterised the 

 ages immediately after the deluge ? 



There were, properly speaking, no such buildings as temples 

 either in Polynesia or Indo-America — what we should call their 

 temples being merely square or rather oblong spaces, enclosed 

 with massive walls, but without roofs. It is observed by Mitford, 

 in his History of Greece, that the antiquity of the writings of 

 Homer may be inferred from his silence on the subject of temples 

 and image-worship. They were both, it would seem, equally 

 unknown to the ancient South Sea Islanders and Indo-Americans ; 

 although in later times, and in particular localities, idolatry 

 obtained a footing and became prevalent among them. "The 

 Indians of the forest," says Humboldt, " when they visit 

 occasionally the missions, conceive with difficulty the idea of a 

 temple or an image. ' These good people,' said the missionary, 

 ' like only processions in the open air. When I last celebrated 

 the patron festival of my village, that of San Antonio, the 

 Indians of Inirida were present at mass. ' Tour Grod,' said they 

 to me, ' keeps himself shut up in a house as if he were old and 

 infirm ; ours is in the forest, in the fields, and on the mountains 

 of Sipapu, whence the rains come.' "* The same magnificent 

 idea of a great Spirit pervading the world is, as is well known, 

 prevalent among the wild Indians of North America, who have 

 neither temples nor images — a fact that would seem to indicate 

 that the forefathers of their race in the Indian Archipelago had 

 been separated from the rest of mankind, before the monstrous 

 idolatries of the East had been devised, and when the purer 

 theology of the age immediately succeeding the deluge still 

 prevailed among men. 



There is another indication of the hoary antiquity, as well as 

 of the identity, of the Polynesian and Indo-American races in 

 the want of mortar or cement of any kind in their more ancient 

 buildings. This, it seems, was one of the characteristics of that 

 pyramidal and colossal style of architecture that obtained in the 

 ages immediately succeeding the deluge. The Eev. Dr. Porter, 

 for some time a missionary in the East, and now a professor in the 

 G-eneral Assembly's College in Belfast, Ireland, who, when 

 stationed in Syria and Damascus, had visited and described the 

 colossal remains of the giant cities of Bashan, to which he assigns 

 an antiquity of not less than four thousand years, thus describes 



* Humboldt's Narrative, toI. v., page 273. 



