418 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
period they are sometimes violent, usually of short dura¬ 
tion, and almost invariably accompanied with rain and 
heavy unsettled weather. 
Though unacquainted with the compass, the islanders 
have names for the cardinal points. The north they 
call Apatoa; the south, Apatoerau; the east, Te hitia o te 
ra, the rising of the sun | and the west, the Tooa o te ra, 
the falling or sinking of the sun. The climate is warm 
to an European: the thermometer ranges between 
70 and 80, the average height in the shade is 74 
degrees. 
Their genealogies and chronological traditions do not 
appear to have been so correctly preserved as those of 
the Hawaiians, one or two of which I have, that appear, 
at least for nearly thirty generations, tolerably correct, 
though they go back one hundred generations. They 
were, however, as correct in their methods of computing 
time as their northern neighbours, if not more so. One 
mode of reckoning time was by ui’s, or generations ; but 
the most general calculation was by the year, which they 
call matahiti, and which consisted of twelve or thirteen 
lunar months, by the tau or matarii, season or half-year, 
by the month of thirty days, and by the day or night. 
They had distinct names for each month 5 and though 
they all agreed about the length of the year, they were 
not unanimous as to the beginning of it, or the names 
of the months, each island having a computation pe¬ 
culiar to itself. 
The following is a statement of their divisions of 
time, copied from a small book on arithmetic, &c, 
prepared by Mr. Davies, which I printed at Huahine in 
1819. It is the method of computation adopted by the 
late Pomare and the reigning family. 
