o to multiply the pigs and the fish. On that assumption,
the unlimited right which these vagabonds enjoyed of appropriating and
consuming the produce of the gardens was probably accorded to them as a
natural and proper remuneration for the inestimable services which their
mere presence was believed to render to the crops. The sexual excesses,
in which they appear to have indulged, would also be intelligible, if it
was imagined that, on the principle of sympathetic magic, such
indulgences actually promoted the multiplication and growth of plants
and animals. But this explanation of the extravagant rites observed by
the Areois, and of the quaint beliefs entertained concerning them, is
offered only as an hypothesis for what it is worth. It may be worth
while noting that among the Kpelle, a tribe of Liberia in West Africa,
there is reported to exist a Secret Society of Twins,[90] but whether
it bears any resemblance to the Society of the Areois I do not know.

[90] D. Westermann, _Die Kpelle, ein Negerstamm in Liberia_
(Goettingen, 1921), p. 228.

A familiar figure of the Polynesian pantheon, who meets us in the
mythology of the Society Islanders, was the famous god or hero Maui.
Many stories of his exploits were told in the islands. It is said that
originally the sky lay flat upon the face of the earth and ocean, being
held down by the legs of a huge cuttle-fish. But Maui dived into the
sea, and, grappling with the monster, utterly dismembered him; whereupon
the sky flew up and expanded into the beautiful blue vault which we now
see above us, with the noonday sun for the keystone of the arch.[91]
Again, the natives told how, one day, sitting in his canoe, Maui let
down his line with a hook at the end of it and fished up the earth,
which had hitherto lain at the bottom of the sea.[92] Also he is said to
have held the sun with ropes to prevent him from going too fast.[93] For
it happened that Maui was hard at work, building a temple, when he
perceived that the day was declining and that the night would overtake
him before he had accomplished his task; so hastily twining some ropes
of coco-nut fibre, he laid hold of the sun's rays and tethered them by
the ropes to a tree, so that the sun could not stir till Maui had
finished the task he was at.[94] Further, Maui is said to have invented
the mode of kindling fire by rubbing the point of one stick in the
groove of another,[95] which was the way in which the Society Isla