"Polynesia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sacrifice meant to avert divine anger must bathe and wash his clothes in running water before returning to his city and home, and similar scruples in regard to holy objects and persons have been observed among the natives of Polynesia, New Zealand and ancient Egypt. The rites, met within all lands, of pouring out water or bathing in order to produce rain from heaven, differ in their significance from ablutions with water and belong to the realm of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... then sauntered slowly home, after buying a tinder box, with which to light my candies. I found my ladder dangling unnoticed, so I nimbly climbed to my room, pulling it up after me, like the savages in Polynesia. I lit my candles, intending to read; but I found that I was far too well inclined to mischief to pay much heed to my book. Casting about for something to do, I thought that I would open a little locked door which led to some (apparently disused) room ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... languages treated in this article, in every part of speech subject to inflexion, there are double forms of the first person, of the dual and plural, similar in character to what have been reported from many islands in Polynesia and Melanesia, and the tribes of North America. Separate forms for "we two," and "he and I," were observed by Rev. James Guenther among the pronouns of the Wiradyuri natives at Wellington,[5] but as he does not mention ...
— The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales • Robert Hamilton Mathews
... flesh and calcining his bones, for an antediluvian dejeuner a la fourchette,—(only, to escape anachronism) sans fourchette! What a pity I have not the privilege of la belle sauvage, far away in some cannibalistic nook of pagan Polynesia." ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... idol of Polynesia was ever a sign of a more shameful idolatry than the modern notion in the minds of certainly the majority of English religious persons, that the Word of God, by which the heavens were of old, and the earth, standing out of the water and in the water,—the Word of God which came to the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... unwillingly, that although the black man is of such very remote antiquity, he has been very stationary in civilization and in attaining the arts of life, if he be compared with the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Red Indian of America, or even with the aborigines of Polynesia." ("The most remarkable proof of the inferiority of the Negro, when compared with the Asiatic, is, that whilst the latter has domesticated the elephant for ages, and rendered it highly useful to man, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... looked on as being of a superior race by the Tenu, and his civilisation won for him the confidence which many wandering Englishmen now find in Africa or Polynesia, like John Dunn. The set combat of two champions seems—by the large gathering—to have been a well-recognised custom among the Tenu, while it exactly accords with Goliath's offer in later times. And raising the shout of victory on ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... statement a whole volume might be written; but as abundant evidence will be given in later chapters relating to the lower races in Africa, Australia, Polynesia, America, and Asia, only a few instances need be cited here. In his recent work on the Origin and Growth of the Moral Sense (1898), Alexander Sutherland, an Australian author, writes ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... mother-right prevails widely over the whole globe; in some places, however, only in fragmentary condition. It is found amongst nearly all the native tribes of America; the peoples of Malaysia, Melanesia, Australia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, the Dravidian tribes of India; in Africa it is found in the eastern Sahara, the Soudan, the east and west coast, and in the centre of the continent, but not to the exclusion, altogether, of father-right, while in the north the intrusion ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Second Edition (London, 1832), I. 110 sq. "Ivi" or "iwi" is the regular word for "bone" in the various Polynesian languages. See E. Tregear, "The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary" (Wellington, New Zealand, 1891), page 109.) However, the same tradition has been recorded in other parts of Polynesia besides Tahiti. Thus the natives of Fakaofo or Bowditch Island say that the first man was produced out of a stone. After a time he bethought him of making a woman. So he gathered earth and moulded the figure of a woman out of it, and having done so he took a rib out of his left ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... southward during the breeding season. It is said that they are sometimes hatched artificially, but the young malao does not take kindly to the bush in Tonga, although the vegetation is much the same. Why should the bird be found in Polynesia, having skipped all the intermediate islands of Melanesia? To what story of the migration of races is ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... memorials of the aborigines themselves, no monuments or inscriptions, now remain to afford ground for speculation. Conjectures have been hazarded, based on no sufficient data, that the Malayan type, which extends from Polynesia to Madagascar, and from Chin-India to Taheite, may still be traced in the configuration, and in some of the immemorial customs, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... 103 sqq.). These are local legends, and knowledge of the curious chariot ritual of Onchestus. The Muses are united with the Graces as in a work of art in the Delphian temple. The poet chooses the Hesiodic and un-Homeric myth of Heaven and Earth, and their progeny: a myth current also in Polynesia, Australia, and New Zealand. The poet is full of inquiry as to origins, even etymological, as is Hesiod. Like Hesiod (and Mr. Max Muller), origines rerum ex nominibus explicat. Finally, the second ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... previously termed "New Holland." The change of name was, I believe, introduced by the celebrated French geographer, Malte Brun, who, in his division of the globe, gave the appellation of Austral Asia and Polynesia to the new discovered lands in the southern ocean; in which division he meant to include the numerous insular groups scattered over ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... landed, he felt as though he were in Central Africa or Polynesia, as the inhabitants wore no clothes, and were bronzed like Ethiopians. He was much horrified at their misery and savage condition. Their dwellings he describes as dens without chimneys, and their food in many parts consisted of a ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... show even on a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say. Gather the open marguerite daisies, and they seem large—so wide a disc, such fingers of rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much green. Clover heads of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden footpath. Like clubs from Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied in shape: some tend to a point—the foxtails—some are hard and cylindrical; others, avoiding the club shape, put forth the slenderest branches with fruit of seed at the ends, which tremble as the air ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Besides these we read of "ivory bracelets and necklets, amber and glass ornaments, and such-like rubbish,"[120] which doubtless found a sale amongst the virtuosi of Rome, as like products of savage industry from Africa or Polynesia find a sale amongst our virtuosi nowadays. Meanwhile, Roman dignity was saved by considering these duties to be in lieu of the unpaid tribute imposed by Caesar, and the island was declared by courtly writers to be already in ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... been almost complete; the population are nominally Christian, and in most of these communities there is a strong nucleus of spiritual life in a valuable body of Church members. This is the case in Polynesia, in the West Indies, and in many stations in South Africa. Around many strong churches in Madagascar, in India, and in China, the sphere of heathenism is still very large. Several stations in those Missions—well planted for the influence required of them—may now be occupied by ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... the axis-ends, Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it does not set for months, Stretch'd in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the horizon and sinks again, Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups, Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... difficulties, but I am not sure that anyone after him until Hugh Lofting has really managed the trick; even in such a masterpiece as "The Wind in the Willows" we are not quite convinced. John Dolittle's friends are convincing because their creator never forces them to desert their own characteristics. Polynesia, for instance, is natural from first to last. She really does care about the Doctor but she cares as a bird would care, having always some place to which she is going when her business with her friends is over. And when Mr. Lofting invents fantastic animals ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Europa Island Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern and Antarctic Lands Gabon The Gambia Gaza Strip Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Glorioso Islands Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the Hawaiian language was still in a formative stage, and it is said that his counsels had influence in shaping it. His use of r instead of l in the words hula, alaapapa, and palaoa may, therefore, be ascribed to the fact of his previous acquaintance with the dialects of southern Polynesia, in which the sound of r to a large extent substitutes that of l, and to the probability that for that reason his ear was already attuned to the prevailing southern fashion, and his judgment prepossessed ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... her companions thanked Providence, because they were in safety. In fact, it was on a continent, and not on one of the fatal isles of Polynesia, that the tempest had thrown them. Their return to their country, from any point of South America on which they should land, ought not, it ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... movement the tired woman had made her buy. She got a bun and some cocoa in the little refreshment-room, and then wandered through the galleries up-stairs, crowded with Polynesian idols and Polynesian dancing-garments, and all the simple immodest accessories to life in Polynesia, to a seat among the mummies. She was trying to bring her problems to a head, and her mind insisted upon being even more discursive and atmospheric than usual. It generalized everything ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... proper work again. I got keen to go on with it, and so I came back into the world. You come back physically clean—as though you had had your arteries and veins washed out. And your brain has been cleaned, too.... I shall stick to the mountains now until I am old, and then I shall sail a boat in Polynesia. That is what so many old men do. Only last year one of the great leaders of the samurai—a white-haired man, who followed the Rule in spite of his one hundred and eleven years—was found dead in his boat far away from any land, far to the south, lying ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the prehistoric process of domestication; savages rear captive animals; instances in North America; South America; North Africa; Equatorial Africa; South Africa; Australia; New Guinea Group; Polynesia; ancient Syria. Sacred animals; menageries and shows in amphitheatres; instances in ancient Egypt; Assyria; Rome; Mexico; Peru; Syria and Greece. Domestication is only possible when the species has certain natural faculties, viz.—great ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Type: French possession administered by France from French Polynesia by High Commissioner of the Republic Jean MONTPEZAT Capital: none; administered ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... known to the Malays, although the intercourse of the latter with other tribes on the north Australian coast has been undoubtedly frequent, nowhere have the Australian natives adopted that kind of arm, whilst in New Guinea and all over Northern Polynesia the bow and arrow is the inevitable war accoutrement of the savage, who certainly obtained the knowledge of it from his Malay forefathers. No wonder, then, that in the district explored by Grey, these arms should have given way to the equally effective ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... probability, a practice so common through the inhabitants of Polynesia, which will be minutely described in an after division of this collection. It may suffice to say at present, that this decoration is formed by pricking the skin with sharp instruments till it just bleeds, and afterwards rubbing some coloured powders into the punctures, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... favorable circumstances. On any calculation of probabilities, it will seem likely enough that among the numberless small societies of men that have appeared and vanished in primeval Asia and Europe, in Africa, Australia, America, and Polynesia, there may have been some at least equal, if not superior, in mental endowments, to that fortunate tribe of central Asia, whose posterity has come to be the dominant race of our time. Among their leaders may have been men qualified to rank with the most renowned heroes, ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... are; that in their dispositions and education they differ in no way from Spaniards, and that the Spanish have been to the last the most active agents in the African slave-trade. Those who know the high state of civilisation of which the natives of Eastern Polynesia are capable, and the remarkable fitness of their minds for receiving the truths of the gospel, will naturally feel unmitigated horror at the thought of their being made the victims of so abominable a scheme. This was especially the feeling of Mr ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... further points out, that in prehistoric times the Malay and Indonesian stock spread westwards to Madagascar and eastwards to the Philippines and Formosa, Micronesia and Polynesia. "This astonishing expansion of the Malaysian people throughout the Oceanic area is sufficiently attested by the diffusion of common (Malayo-Polynesian) speech from Madagascar to Easter Island and from ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher |
