the
more remarkable constellations; and are not without some conception that
the issues of human affairs are occasionally influenced, or at least
indicated, by the movements of the stars. The Pleiades, for instance,
they believe to be seven of their departed countrymen, fixed in the
firmament; one eye of each of them appearing in the shape of a star,
being the only part that is visible. But it is a common superstition
among them, as we have already noticed, that the left eyes of their
chiefs, after death, become stars.

This notion is far from being destitute of poetical beauty; and perhaps,
indeed, exhibits the common mythological doctrine of the glittering host
of heaven being merely an assemblage of the departed heroes of earth, in
as ingenious a version as it ever has received. It would be easy to
collect many proofs of the extensive diffusion of this ancient faith,
traces of which are to be found in the primitive astronomy of every
people. The classical reader will at once recollect, among many others
of a similar kind, the stories of Castor and Pollux, and of Berenice's
tresses, the latter of which has been so elegantly imitated by Pope, in
telling us of the fate of the vanished lock of Belinda:--

"But trust the muse--she saw it upward rise,
Though marked by none but quick poetic eyes;
(So Home's great founder to the heavens withdrew,
To Proculus alone confessed to view);
A sudden star it shot through liquid air,
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair."

The New Zealanders conceive, also, that what we call a shooting star is
ominous of the approaching dissolution of any one of their great chiefs
who may be unwell when it is seen. Like the vulgar among ourselves, too,
they have their man in the moon; who, they say, is one of their
countrymen named Rona, who was taken up long ago, one night when he
went to the well to fetch water.

Nicholas has given us, on the authority of his friend Duaterra, the most
particular account that has appeared of the inferior deities of New
Zealand. Their number, according to him, is very great, and each of them
has his distinct powers and functions; one being placed over the
elements, another over the fowls and fishes, and so of the rest.
Deifications of the different passions and affections, also, it seems,
find a place in this extended mythology.

In another part of his work, Nicholas remarks, as corroborative of the
Malay descent of the New Zealanders, the singu