186 
ORIGIN, AS TRACED BY THE LANGE AGE. 
elegance and taste. In ship building, they do not seem to 
have acquired anything from them; not having iron, they 
could not advance on the skill of their forefathers. 
There is scarcely any work relating to the Polynesian Isles 
to he compared with that of Mariner’s Tonga Isles, either for the 
faithfulness of the description given of their manners and 
customs, or for the general interest of his narrative. From 
it we gather many particulars of resemblance between the 
inhabitants of New Zealand and Tonga; whilst the former 
believes that Maui fished up his island, which thence bears the 
name of his fish, the latter also states that his isles were drawn 
out of the water by Tangaloa, whilst fishing with the line and 
hook (see vol. ii., p. 99). Tangaloa, we have already said, is 
identical with Tangaroa, one of the most ancient of the Maori 
deities, tie is also viewed in Tonga as the god of the ocean. 
Their ideas likewise agree in the pre-existence of the ocean, 
and in the sky being solid, originally resting on the earth. 
The Hotua Pou, who are spoken of as mischievous gods, 
whose attribute is never to dispense good, but petty evils, not 
as a punishment, but indiscriminately from a pure mischievous 
disposition, exactly agrees with the Atua PotiJci of the Maori. 
The New Zealander also has some idea of high chiefs, or 
arikis, going to heaven after death, whilst those of inferior 
note went to Po, which is their Hades ; also that their gods 
manifest themselves to their descendants or priests, under the 
form of lizards, spiders, moths, whirlwinds, flashes of lightning, 
&c.; that they often enter the body of individuals, and surprise 
them, using their voice to utter their will. 
Their ideas of omens are also similar, as well as the word 
for divination (vol. ii., p. 191), ta niu, although the way of 
divining is different, the Tonga native drawing a favorable ox- 
unfavorable conclusion from the spinning of the cocoa nut. 
The tuitonga and veachi, sacred chiefs, have no representa¬ 
tive in New Zealand, except that every high chief or ariki is 
a sacred character, and supposed to have the power of con¬ 
versing at pleasure with his ancestral gods, and, in fact, to be 
one himself on earth. The former seem to have been rather 
spiritual kings, more nearly resembling the Dairi of Japan, 
