POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
413 
Their ideas, as might naturally be expected, were 
fabulous and erroneous in the extreme. They imagined 
that the sea which surrounded their islands was a level 
plane, and that at the visible horizon, or some distance 
beyond it, the sky, or ra% joined the ocean, enclosing as 
with an arch, or hollow cone, the islands in the immediate 
vicinity. They were acquainted with other islands, as 
Nuuhiva, or the Marquesas, Vaihi, or the Sandwich 
Islands, Tongatabu, or the Friendly Islands. The names 
of these recurred in their traditions or songs. Subse¬ 
quently, too, they had heard of Beritani, or Britain, 
Paniola, or Spain, &c. but they imagined that each of 
these had a distinct atmosphere, and was enclosed in 
the same manner as they thought the heavens surrounded 
their own islands. Hence they spoke of foreigners as 
those who came from behind the sky, or from the other 
side of what they considered the sky of their part of the 
world. 
What their opinions were, as to the material of the 
heaven to which they gave such definite boundaries, I 
could never learn; but, according to their mythology, 
there were a series of celestial strata, or tua^ ten in 
number, each stratum being the abode of spirits or gods, 
whose elevation was regulated by their rank or powers; 
the tenth, or last heaven, which was perfect darkness, 
being called a terai haamama of tane, and being the abode 
of the first class only. 
We often experienced a degree of confusion in our 
ideas connected with their use of the term po, night or 
darkness, and its various compounds. They usually, but 
not invariably, spoke of the region of night as i raro, or 
below. In this instance, in describing the highest 
heaven as the region of purest light, they spoke of it also 
