The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1894-03-05

shell of the giant clam, which cuts
like an axe.
Like all other aborigines encoun-
tered in the march of civilization, the
Polynesians have succumbed TO aico-
hol and the diseases Of the white man.
The native Hawaiian population IS
today only one-tenth as numerous as
when Captain Cook sailed. Thanks
to that great navigator, most OF the
islands of Oceanica are overrun with
pigs, his rule having been to leave
pair of them wherever he landed. No
large mammals are native to those
isolated islands, because they could
not reach them.
The savage Polynesians even now
commonly call the white people "sky-
breakers" They think that the
heavens shut down over the earth at
the horizon, and that the pale faces
must have burst through the wall Of
sky from beyond in order to reach
their islands. They believe that the
world is cocoanut shell of enormous
dimensions, at the top of which is a
single aperture communicating with
the upper air where human beings
dwell. At the very bottom of the
shell is a stem gradually tapering to a
point, which represents the beginning
of all things. This point is spirit or
demon without human form, whose
name is ''Root of All Existence" By
him the entire fabric of creation is
sustained.
In the interior of the cocoanut shell,
at its very bottom, lives a female
demon. So narrow is the space into
which she is crowded that she is
Obliged to sit forever with knees and
chin touching. Her name is "The
Very Beginning" and from her are
sprung numerous spirits. They in
habit five different floors, into which
the great cocoanut is divided. From
certain of these spirits mankind is
descended. The islanders, regarding
themselves as the only real men and
women, were formerly accustomed to
look upon strangers as evil spirits In
the guise of humanity, whom they
killed when they could, offering them
as sacrifices.
Hades, or the land of ghosts, is sup
posed to be inside the mighty cocoanut
shell, beneath the surface of the earth,
which is merely thin crust over a
vast hollow. Some of the islands, be-
ing of volcanic origin, are honey
combed with caves and frightful
chasms, down the deepest of which
the corpses of the dead are thrown,
SO that the survivors not unnaturally
imagine the entrance to the neither
world to be down one or more of these
pits. Existence in this strange spirit
land is pursued by the immortals very
much as people live on earth. They
are numerous and their ways are
mostly far from engaging. Some tribes
of them are cannibals, whose delight
it is to entrap and feed upon the souls
of mortaIs. Others only have one eye
apiece.
To these natives of the South Pacific
the cocoanut is a vegetable product of
the utmost Importance. Its origin
was divine. There was young wo-
man, daughter of goddess, who lived
in a cave, close by which ran a stream
that was filled with cells. One day
while bathing she was surprised by a
huge eel, which rapidly assumed the
form of a handsome youth. He in
formed her that he was the god of the
cells. They became lovers, but finally
he was compelled to bid her farewell.
Before doing so, however, he appeared
in his eel shape and directed her to
cut off his head and bury it. She did
SO, and it sprouted into tree. From
this tree all the cocoanuts in the world
were derived, and on each nut are in
variibly found the two eyes and
mouth of the young man. The white |
kernel is commonly referred to in |
Polynesia as his "brains."
RENE BACHE.