TRADITIONS 01 THE DELUGE. 391 
appeared, above the wide-spread sea. These were 
afterwards covered, and all the inhabitants of the 
land perished. The waters subsequently retired, the 
fisherman and his companions left their retreat, 
took up their abode on the main land, and became 
the progenitors of the present inhabitants. 
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 elevation i than the summits 
of the lofty mountains on the adjacent shore, or 
whether the waters, when, according to their repre¬ 
sentations, they rose several thousand feet above 
their present level, formed a kind of cylindrical 
wall around Toamarama, the natives do not pre¬ 
tend to know, and usually decline discussing this 
circumstance. Their belief in the event was, how¬ 
ever, unshaken ; and whenever we have conversed 
with them on the subject, they have alluded to the 
farero, coral, shells, and other marine substances, 
occasionally found near the surface of the ground, 
cn 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 evi¬ 
dences 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, 
