United States or Svalbard and Jan Mayen ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The girl left him, to return a few minutes later with grey-headed old Kanka, who in response to an inquiring look from his master, bent his head and said slowly "'Tis a strange ship one that never before have we seen in Lele." The youth made him no answer. He merely raised his arm and pointed his finger at the three messengers. "Then they have lied to me. Bring them here to me."
On Lele, which is separated from Strong’s Island at the harbor by a very narrow channel, there is a “conical mountain surrounded by a wall some twenty feet high, and of enormous thickness.” The whole island appears to present “a series of Cyclopean inclosures and lines of great walls every where overgrown with forest.” Some of the inclosures are parallelograms 200 by 100 feet in extent; one is much larger.
Much has been written of their origin, much that is but empty theory: but, as 'Historicus' has remarked in the columns of a local journal, the lesson to be learned from their home dialect and from their strange surnames, Gogte, Lele, Karve, Gadre, Hingne and so on, is that the Chitpavan Brahmans of Western India came in legendary ages from Gedrosia, Kirman and the Makran coast, and that prior to their domicile in those latitudes they probably formed part of the population of ancient Egypt or Africa.
On the evening of the day on which we sighted the blue peaks of beautiful Kusaie, the sky began to look ugly to the eastward, and at daylight it was blowing so hard, with such a dangerous sea, that I decided not to attempt to enter the weather harbour Port Lelé though that had been my intention, but to run round to the lee side to Coquille Harbour, where we could renew our fresh provisions, spell a day or two, and be among friends, for I knew the people of Kusaie pretty well.
Some of them about thirty did climb over, but all were killed, for when they jumped down on the other side our people were there waiting. At last four of the sailors made a big hole by tearing out two posts, and rushed out, followed by the Lele men. Letya was the first man to meet the sailors, and he told them to surrender.
The Lele, or high-priest of Mandinga, took an oath of fidelity to the King of Spain; but in 1786 the war with the Darien Indians recommenced and was terminated by a treaty concluded July 27th, 1787, between the archbishop-viceroy and the cacique Bernardo.
Two days later we bade farewell to the old king and his pretty young wife, Se, and the Leonora sailed out of Lêlé. We were first to call at South Harbour, six miles to leeward, where we were to take in yams, pigs and other provisions for the voyage to Providence Island, as we had now over one hundred additional people on board.
Just as the Azores are believed to be the last high peaks of Atlantis, so hints came to me steadily that Ponape and Lele and their basalt bulwarked islets were the last points of the slowly sunken western land clinging still to the sunlight, and had been the last refuge and sacred places of the rulers of that race which had lost their immemorial home under the rising waters of the Pacific.
Mars is the Matamemea, or the star with the sear-leafed face. The Pleiades are called Lii or Mataalii, eyes of chiefs. The belt of Orion is the amonga, or burden carried on a pole across the shoulders. The milky way is ao lele, ao to'a, and the aniva. Ao lele, means flying cloud, and ao to'a, solid cloud.
Nearly a week before the Iroquois had run into Port Lele to refresh before proceeding westward and northward to the Bonin Islands in pursuance of her cruise.
Word Of The Day