POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
59 
his wife and child to the place appointed. Some say 
he took with him a friend who was residing under his 
roof, with a dog, a pig, and a pair of fowls, so that 
the party consisted of four individuals, besides the only 
domesticated animals known in the islands. 
They reached the refuge appointed, before the close 
of the day; and as the sun approached the horizon, 
the waters of the ocean began to rise, the inhabitants 
of the adjacent shore left their dwellings on the beach, 
and fled to the mountains. The waters continued to 
rise during the night, and the next morning the tops 
of the mountains only appeared, above the wide-spread 
surface of the sea. These were afterwards covered, and 
all the inhabitants of the land perished. The waters 
subsequently retired, the fisherman and his compa¬ 
nions left their retreat, took up their abode on the main 
land, and became the progenitors of the present in¬ 
habitants. 
Toamarama, the ark in which those individuals are 
stated to have been preserved, is a small and low 
coralline island, of exceedingly circumscribed extent, 
while its highest parts are not more than two feet above 
the level of the sea. Whether, on the occasion above 
referred to, it was raised by Ruahatu to a greater eleva¬ 
tion than the summits of the lofty mountains on the 
adjacent shore, or whether the waters, when, according 
to their representations, they rose several thousand feet 
above their present level, formed a kind of cylindrical 
wall around Toamarama,, the natives do not pretend to 
know, and usually decline discussing this circumstance. 
Their belief in the event was, however, unshaken; and 
whenever we have conversed with them on the subject, 
they have alluded to the farero^ coral^ shells, and other 
