MYTHOLOGY. 
41 
and eat them. Maru, the god, flew up to heaven; but his 
body was devoured, and had not he taken refuge in the fissure 
of a rock, his divinity also would have been destroyed. 
Such is a portion of a very long myth; a great deal of 
which will not bear repeating. It is interesting as shewing 
what were their ideas of their gods, and of heaven, which, 
from this account, differed little from the earth; it had its 
dwellings, its cultivations, the same as the earth ; its inhabitants 
had their labors, quarrels, passions, need of food, like men. 
The persons alluded to, were chief gods. There are many others, 
but it is not necessary here to name more—they had gods many 
and lords many. The way in which their gods manifested 
themselves to men, were various—the whirlwind indicated the 
presence of a deity ; the rain-bow was exclusively the property 
of Uenuku ; the lightning and thunder belonged to Whiro ; 
meteors, or any unaccountable noise, were tokens of the 
presence of a god. Sometimes they manifested themselves in 
the forms of spiders, moths, and flies ; but most chiefly by 
the mouths of their priests, of which they took possession. 
During that period, the person thus possessed appeared quite 
frantic, uttering the most fearful cries, and being distorted 
in every limb; whilst in this state, every thing he said, 
or did, was considered as the immediate act of the god within 
him. 
Heroes were thought to become stars, of greater or less 
brightness, according to the number of their victims slain in 
fight; they scooped out their eyes and swallowed them, in 
order to obtain the spirit and power of the enemy slain. The 
spirit of a chief, thus consuming those of the chiefs slain, was 
raised above men; he became a god even upon earth, and 
after death, a bright luminary of heaven. 
Of the gods of the night, Hine-nui-te-po ranks the highest, 
more being spoken of her, than of all the others; and yet, 
she only appears to be a personification of night and Hades. 
Prayers, however, were addressed to her. She was known in 
Tonga, Tahaiti, and Hawaii, with a slight change of name 
and history. Po, or night, was the great name for Hades, 
although, in general, the Reinga, which is only the entrance 
