United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Thus they speak as though Tu-Kila-Kila were a continuous existence; and the god of the moment, himself, will even often refer to events which occurred to him, as he says, a hundred years ago or more, but which he really knows, of course, only by the persistent tradition of the islanders. They are a very curious people, these Bouparese. But what would you have?
At last, after he had instructed it by slow degrees how to repeat this long sermon or poem which I have often heard it recite in a sing-song voice from beginning to end his time came, as they say, and he had to give way to another Tu-Kila-Kila; for the Bouparese have a proverb like our own about the king, 'The High God is dead; may the High God live forever! But before he gave up his Soul to his successor, and was eaten or buried, whichever is the custom, he handed over his pet to the King of the Birds, strictly charging all future bearers of that divine office to care for the parrot as they would care for a son or a daughter.
"It isn't Polynesian; that I know well, for I speak Bouparese now like a native of Boupari; and it isn't the only other language spoken at the present day in the South Seas the Melanesian of New Caledonia for that I learned well from the Kanakas while I was serving my time as a convict among them. All we can say for certain is that it may, perhaps, be some very ancient tongue.
Word Of The Day