LEGENDARY ACCOUNT OF THE 
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if he does not immediately retire, and allow the 
patient to be restored. An old man once told me, 
very seriously, tliat, as he was performing over 
the sick, he saw the god come out of his mouth, 
in the form of a lizard ; and that from that mo- 
ment the man began to recover, and was shortly 
after restored to perfect liealth. 
Their ideas of Mawe, the being who, they tell 
us, fished-up the island from the bottom of the sea, 
ai’e truly ridiculous. Most of the old men tell the 
same tale respecting liiin ; though of course, as all 
firoes by tradition, it is added to or diminished, ac- 
cording to the fancy of the narrator. The prin- 
cipal features of tlie tale are these : — Mawe dwelt 
upon a barren rock in the middle of the sea, sup- 
posed to exist somewhere northward of the “Three 
Kings'": his wife Hina, and his brother Taki, were 
his only companions. He had two sons ; both of 
whom he slew when they were young men, that 
he might make fish-hooks of their jaw-bones. 
The right-eye of each he afterwards placed in the 
heavens ; making one the morning, and the other 
the evening, star. So great was the strength of 
Mawe, that he could draw up the largest whales, 
and take them with ease on shore. While fishing 
one day, with the jaw-bone of his eldest son for a 
hook, and a piece of his own ear for the bait, lj>e 
fastened on something exceedingly heavy, which he 
found to be land. He was three months in hauling 
it up above the water ; and would not then have 
succeeded, had he not caught a dove, put his spirit 
