182 ORIGIN, AS TRACED BY THE LANGUAGE. 
Another remarkable word for its travels is Paradise. Every 
nation has pictured to itself some place of bliss, some abode of 
rest for the soul. Men vary in their idea of the character of 
that happy spot, but still the idea exists, and all of them are 
included between the extremes of the sensual paradise of 
Mahomet, and the spiritual and holy one of the Christian. 
The word paradise itself conveys the idea of a garden enclosed, 
a garden of delight; it is the place of repose, it is protected 
from every foe; no enemy can enter, or disturb the rest of 
the soul. The Hebrew word is pardes ; the Arabic firdaus, 
plural faradisa; Syriac and Armenian partes; and Sanscrit 
pradisa, or paradisa , a circuit or district; Jirdusi, Persian, 
a pleasure garden ; UapuSeLooc, an enclosed garden, paradise ; 
it is seen in the English words park and pale, and is preserved 
in parae, New Zealand, a small plain enclosed with forest. The 
simple root of all these words appears to be Pa, to obstruct, 
hence Taie-pa or Pa-korokoro, are fences for farms; Rai lie-pa 
and Parepare are fortifications for towns; and the same root 
is found in the New Zealand word pare, to ward off, and in 
the English parry. 
We next suppose the canoes of the first colonists of New 
Zealand have reached its shores ; wearied with their long 
voyage, they gladly step on shore, and anxiously they look 
around to supply the cravings of hunger. Reduced to the 
greatest extremities, we may imagine they would lose no time 
in ascertaining what were the edible products of the country 
they had reached. One of the first objects which would arrest 
their attention when they entered the luxuriant forest of their 
newly-discovered home, would be the palm tree; coming from 
the sunny isles, whose beauteous shores are fringed with the 
cocoa nut trees, which mainly supplied them with food, the 
palm would immediately arrest their attention, and excite their 
hopes, that they had found the well-known tree. The name 
for the cocoa palm in most of the isles of Polynesia, is ni ; in 
the Brumer isles, niu. When they found to their disappoint¬ 
ment that the New Zealand palm did not produce fruit, they 
would naturally exclaim, it only bears leaves, and that is 
precisely the meaning of its name ni-kau, only leaves. The 
