TAHITIAN PROPHETS. 383 
celebrated of this name resided at Raiatea, and on 
one occasion, when supposed to be under the in¬ 
spiration of the god, he predicted that in future 
ages a vaa ama ore , literally an “ outriggerless 
canoe,” would arrive at the islands from some 
foreign land. Accustomed to attach that appen¬ 
dage to their single canoes, whatever might be 
their size or quality, they considered an outrigger 
essential to their remaining upright on the water, 
and consequently could not believe that a canoe 
without one would live at sea. The absence of 
this has ever appeared to the South Sea Islanders 
as one of the greatest wonders connected with the 
visits of the first European vessels. At one of 
the Hervey Islands, where they had never seen 
a vessel until recently visited by a Missionary, 
when the boat was lowered down to the water, 
and pushed off by the rowers from the ship’s side, 
the natives simultaneously and involuntarily ex¬ 
claimed— u It will overturn and sink, it has no 
outrigger.” 
The chiefs and others, to whom Maui delivered 
his prophecy, were also convinced in their own 
minds, that a canoe would not swim without this 
necessary balance, and charged him with fore¬ 
telling an impossibility. He persisted in his pre¬ 
dictions, and, in order to remove their scepticism 
as to its practicability, launched his umete, or oval 
wooden dish, upon the surface of a pool of water 
near which he was sitting, and declared that in 
the same manner would the vessel swim that 
should arrive. 
We have not been able to ascertain the 
period when this prediction was delivered. It 
was preserved among the people by oral tradi¬ 
tion, until the arrival of Captain Wallis’s and 
