Chapter Twenty-four - Page 2

knowledge while living for months with
a tribe of savages, wholly unchanged from their original
primitive condition, and reputed the most ferocious in the South
Seas.

The fact is, that there is a vast deal of unintentional
humbuggery in some of the accounts we have from scientific men
concerning the religious institutions of Polynesia. These
learned tourists generally obtain the greater part of their
information from retired old South-Sea rovers, who have
domesticated themselves among the barbarous tribes of the
Pacific. Jack, who has long been accustomed to the long-bow, and
to spin tough yarns on the ship's forecastle, invariably
officiates as showman of the island on which he has settled, and
having mastered a few dozen words of the language, is supposed to
know all about the people who speak it. A natural desire to make
himself of consequence in the eyes of the strangers, prompts him
to lay claim to a much greater knowledge of such matters than he
actually possesses. In reply to incessant queries, he
communicates not only all he knows but a good deal more, and if
there be any information deficient still he is at no loss to
supply it. The avidity with which his anecdotes are noted down
tickles his vanity, and his powers of invention increase with the
credulity auditors. He knows just the sort of information
wanted, and furnishes it to any extent.

This is not a supposed case; I have met with several individuals
like the one described, and I have been present at two or three
of their interviews with strangers.

Now, when the scientific voyager arrives at home with his
collection of wonders, he attempts, perhaps, to give a
description of some of,the strange people he has been visiting.
Instead of representing them as a community of lusty savages, who
are leading a merry, idle, innocent life, he enters into a very
circumstantial and learned narrative of certain unaccountable
superstitions and practices, about which he knows as little as
the islanders themselves. Having had little time, and scarcely
any opportunity, to become acquainted with the customs he
pretends to describe, he writes them down one after another in an
off-hand, haphazard style; and were the book thus produced to be
translated into the tongue of the people of whom it purports to
give the history, it would appear quite as wonderful to them as
it does to the American public, and much more improbable.

For my own part, I am free to confess my almost entire inability
to gratify any curiosity that may be felt with regard to the
theology of the valley. I doubt whether the inhabitants
themselves could do so. They are either too lazy or too sensible
to worry themselves about abstract points of religious