56 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
to them as great an improbability as this^ yet the actual 
appearance of one, leads many to think that possibly 
they may witness the other. This remaining pre¬ 
diction also has reference to a canoe, and declares 
that after the arrival of the canoe without an outrigger, 
e vaa taura ore, a canoe or vessel without ropes or 
cordage shall come among them. What idea Maui 
designed to convey by this declaration, it is perhaps 
not easy to ascertain; but the people say it is next 
to impossible that the masts should be sustained, the 
sails attached, or the vessel worked, without ropes or 
cordage. They say, however, that one prediction re¬ 
specting the vessels has been accomplished, but that 
the other remains to be realized. I have often thought, 
when contemplating the little use of rigging on board 
our steam-vessels, that should a specimen of this modern 
invention ever reach the South Sea Islands, although 
the natives would not, perhaps, like the inhabitants 
of the banks of the Ganges, be ready to fall down and 
worship the wonderful exhibition of mechanical skill, 
they would be equally astonished at that power within 
itself by which it would be propelled, and would at 
once declare that the second prediction of Maui was 
accomplished, and the vessel without rigging or cordage 
had arrived. 
They have other predictions, but less circumstantial 
or probable, yet I never could learn that they have ever 
been led, from the declarations of their wise men, to 
anticipate the arrival of any distinguished personage 
in their country. The expectation of some wise and 
great prince or ruler rising up among them, or coming 
from some distant region, which has prevailed among 
many nations, and is generally supposed to refer to the 
