Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/126

 94 Collectanea.

not have been a passing carriage. Next day a woman living opposite the entrance gate told the usual story of the black coach with horses liaving been seen driving over the bridge and up the approacli.

Usually a headless coachman is on the box.

W. Y. DE ViSMES Kane.

Some Nature Myths from Samoa.

(Continued from Vol. XXV'I. p. 172.) 77/1? Voyage of Kae.

Leau, a chief living in Haamea, built a boat to sail in his pond, the same pond that is still to be seen near Fatal. Great was the complaining of the people, for why was the boat not launched in the sea ? What purpose in sailing in a pond ?

And Leau, knowing that thus his people spake, bade them prepare to sail and see the talking buko tree and the other marvels of Bulotu. And so they set forth, but when Haapai appeared, and then Vavau, the sailors urged their chief to turn to land, saying that the boat was not fit for distant travel. But Leau refused, and on they sailed to the edge of the heavens.

At last they came to the shallow sea, and after that the sea that is covered with floating pumice fragments, and then they reached the place where the ancients say the sea is viscous. There they struck the sail, and leaping into the water dragged the boat till they came to the pandanus tree that stands on the edge of the world, and the mast becoming entangled in its branches, two of the crew, Kae and Longoboa, clambered into the tree and clung to a bough.

Now in this place the sky is open, and when Kae and Longoboa pushed the boat off strongly it darted through the heavens and disappeared, and therewith disappeared Leau and his companions. But Kae and Longoboa, left clinging in the branches of the pandanus tree, straightway determined that when the tide rose they would swim off, and each seek for himself a land.