Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. Ill 



type of civilisation, photographed 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 occa- 

 sionally 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. ' Your God,' 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 tops of the moun- 

 tains of Sipapu, whence the rains come.' " % The same magnifi- 

 cent idea of a great spirit pervading the world is also, 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 Archi- 

 pelago 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, wcs one of the characteristics of that 

 pyramidal and colossal style of architecture that obtained in the 

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

 recently a missionary in the East, and now a professor in the 

 General 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 Bash an, to which he assigns 

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

 one of the houses which he entered in one of these cities. " The 

 house seemed to have undergone little change from the time its 

 old master had left it ; and yet the thick nitrous crust on the 

 floor showed that it had been deserted for long ages. The walls 

 were perfect, nearly five feet thick, built of large blocks of hewn 



% Humboldt's Narrative, vol. v., page 278. 



