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She was metamorphosed, or was buried in earth, a tree springing up from the place. I think we do know why the people of Mangaia 'believe in the change of human beings into trees. It is one among many examples of the savage sense of the intercommunity of all nature. Why savages adopt the major premise, 'Human life is on a level with the life of all nature, philosophers explain in various ways.
These two classes of plant-legends must be carefully kept apart. Secondly, what does it help us to know that people in Mangaia believed in the change of human beings into trees, if we do not know the reason why? This is what we want to know; and without it the mere juxtaposition of stories apparently similar is no more than the old trick of explaining ignotum per ignotius.
BEVERIDGE Reef, 20 deg S., 167 deg W., is described in the "Naut. Mag." SAVAGE Island, 19 deg S., 170 deg W., has been described by Cook and Forster. The Rev. J. Williams informs me that the reef fringing its shores, resembles that round Mangaia; coloured red. PYLSTAART Island.
In Mangaia, a Polynesian island, religious and civil authority were lodged in separate hands, spiritual functions being discharged by a line of hereditary kings, while the temporal government was entrusted from time to time to a victorious war-chief, whose investiture, however, had to be completed by the king.
"Humanly speaking, not one-third part of the work which has been done could without native help have been accomplished. Mangaia is a notable example. That island is about twenty miles in circumference, and contains about three thousand inhabitants.
He had succeeded in finding Easter Island, had visited the groups of the low archipelago, and had discovered numerous separate islands, Norfolk, Botany, Palmerston, Hervey, Savage, Mangaia, Wateeoo, Allakootaia, Turtle, Toobania, and Christmas, as also the magnificent group known as the Sandwich Islands. He had ascertained the strait between America and Asia to be eighteen leagues in width.
The Favourite had experienced a hurricane* off Mangaia Island, the natives of which gave notice of its approach; and at Tahiti Captain Sullivan was also told that he might expect a hurricane before long. From this, and the experience of other navigators, it appears that rotatory gales are prevalent in the Pacific as well as in the Indian Ocean.
If then the white kernel had been called Tuna's brain, we have only to remember that in Mangaia there are two kinds of cocoanut trees, and we shall then have no difficulty in understanding why these twin cocoanut trees were said to have sprung from the two halves of Tuna's brain, one being red in stem, branches, and fruit, whilst the other was of a deep green.
The ship's position at noon of the latter day was about 130 miles to the North-East by East of Mangaia Island. The duration of this storm, then, may be considered to have been from 4 P.M. to midnight, in which eight hours the wind had veered gradually from East round by South to West-South-West.
The boat conveyed him just outside the surf, when he leaped overboard and swam through it, his countrymen being seen eagerly gathering round him to receive accounts of what he had seen. Mangaia was left on March 30, and the next day, at noon, two islands were seen a large and a small one.
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