POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
57 
appearance of the Saviour^ does not seem to have existed 
among them } unless we suppose the anticipated return 
of Rono to the Sandwich Islands^ an Avatar of whom, 
the inhabitants supposed Captain Cook to be, refers 
to this event. 
Traditions of the deluge, the most important event 
in reference to the external structure and appearance 
of our globe that has occurred since its creation, have 
been found to exist among the natives of the South 
Sea Islands, from the earliest periods of their history. 
Accounts, more or less according with the scripture 
narrative of this awful visitation of Divine justice upon 
the antediluvian world, have been discovered among 
most of the nations of the earth; and the striking 
analogy between those religiously preserved by the 
inhabitants of the islands of the Pacific, and the Mosaic 
account, would seem to indicate a degree of high 
antiquity belonging to this isolated people. 
The principal facts are the same in the traditions 
prevailing among the inhabitants of the different groups, 
although they differ in several minor particulars. In 
one group the accounts stated, that in ancient times 
Taaroa, the principal god according to their mythology, 
the creator of the world, being angry with men on 
account of their disobedience to his will, overturned 
the world into the sea, when the earth sunk in the 
waters, excepting a few aurus, or projecting points, 
which remaining above its surface, constituted the pre¬ 
sent cluster of islands. The memorial preserved by the 
inhabitants of Eimeo, states, that after the inundation of 
the land, when the water subsided, a man landed from a 
canoe near Tiataepua, in their island, and erected an 
altar, or marae, in honour of his god. 
ir. I 
