THE HEAVENS, AND THE HEAVENLY BODIES.

1.  The Samoans say that of old the heavens fell down, and that people had to crawl about like the lower animals.  After a time the arrow-root and another similar plant pushed up the heavens, and the place where these plants grew is still pointed out and called the Teengalangi, or heaven-pushing place; but the heads of the people continued to knock on the skies, and the place was excessively hot.  One day a woman was passing along who had been drawing water.  A man came up to her and said he would push up the heavens if she would give him some water to drink.  “Push them up first,” she replied.  He pushed them up, and said, “Will that do?” “No,” said she, “a little farther.”  He sent them up higher still, and then she handed him her cocoa-nut shell water-bottle.  Another account says that the giant god Ti’iti’i pushed up the heavens, and that at the place where he stood there are hollow places in a rock nearly six feet long which are pointed out as his footprints.

2.  Tradition says that in former times the people on earth had frequent intercourse with the heavens.  We have already noticed some of these visits (pp. 13, 105).  These stories are probably founded on the old idea that the heavens ended at the horizon.  They thought that there was solidity there as well as extension; and therefore a distant voyage to some other island might be called a visit to some part of the heavens.  When white men made their appearance, it was thought that they and the vessel which brought them had in some way broken through the heavens; and, to this day white men are called Papalangi, or Heaven-bursters.

But imagination required something more circumstantial, and hence the variety of traditionary schemes by which the people were supposed to go up and down on these visits to the heavens.  One story speaks of a mountain, the top of which reached to the skies.  Another says that a very dense column of smoke took people up.  Another tells of a tree which, when it fell, was sixty miles in length.  Another tree is mentioned which formed a sort of ladder, but on different sections of it there were repulsive or stinging insects, through which few but the very courageous persevered in forcing their way.  First there was a part swarming with cockroaches; then a place full of ants; then a section covered with large venomous ants; beyond that again was a part of the tree overspread with centipedes, from which many turned and went down again to terra firma.  The centipede region cleared, however, some finer branches were reached, and perched on them, the tourists waited for a high wind, which swung them up and down for a time, and then they were suddenly jerked in to the heavens.