60 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
marine substances, occasionally found near the surface 
of the ground, on the tops of their highest mountains. 
These, they say, would never have been carried there by 
the people, and could not have originally existed in the 
situations in which they are now found, but must have 
been deposited there by the waters of the ocean, when 
the islands were inundated.—We do not consider these 
marine substances as evidences that the islands were 
overflowed at the deluge, but have generally been 
accustomed to attribute to the whole a formation, if not 
posterior, yet not of more than equal antiquity with 
that event. We have usually viewed the coral, shells, &c. 
which do not appear to be fossils, as indications of 
the submarine origin of the mountains, and have sup¬ 
posed they were deposited on the rocks, near the surface 
of which they are now found, when those rocks formed 
the bed of the ocean, and prior to those violent explosive 
convulsions by which they were raised to their present 
elevation, and formed the groups of islands now under 
consideration. 
These are but mere speculative opinions, and however 
strong the indications of such an origin might appear 
to our own minds, we could not demonstrate that the 
different islands now existing had not formerly belonged 
to one large island. Neither could we shew that they 
were not the remains of a continent, originally stretching 
across the Pacific, and uniting Asia and America, 
which, having been overflowed by the waters of the 
deluge, might have disappeared after those disruptions 
had taken place, by which the fountains of the great 
deep were broken up. Such speculations would have 
been useless, and we should only have perplexed the 
minds of the people with our own opinions. In general, 
