hat 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.

3. Some curious stories are told about _the sun_. A woman called
Mangamangai became pregnant by looking at the rising sun. Her son grew
and was named "Child of the Sun." At his marriage he applied to his
mother for a dowry. She sent him to his father, the sun, to beg from
him, and told him how to go. Following her directions he went one
morning with a long vine from the bush--which is the convenient
s