"Polynesian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... overview: This is a traditional Polynesian economy in which more than 90% of the land is communally owned. Economic activity is strongly linked to the US, with which American Samoa conducts the great bulk of its foreign trade. Tuna fishing and tuna processing ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... through my sleep "Come up and be alive," I'd answer—No, unless you'll keep The glass at sixty-five. I might be willing if allowed To wear old Adam's rig, And mix amongst the city crowd Like Polynesian "nig". ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... Madagascar.—These are not Africans to the same extent as the Kaffres of the coast. As far back as the time of Reland it was known that the affinities of the Malagasi language were with the Malay and Polynesian tongues of Asia; but it was also known that the similarity in physiognomy was less than that of language. Hence came a conflict of difficulties. The speech indicated one origin, the colour another—whilst ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... there may, both earlier and later, have existed another way of reaching western America from south-eastern Asia through Pacific archipelagoes and islets now sunk below the sea. In any case it seems quite probable that men of Mongolian or Polynesian type reached America on its western coasts long before the European came from the north-east and east, and that they were helped on this long journey by touching at islands since submerged by ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... to stand close enough in to observe the fine sandy beach extending round it for a considerable distance. Along the shore we saw no canoes, but a number of natives appeared, waving green branches—emblems of peace. As we watched them through our telescopes, we saw that they were of the Polynesian, or brown race—fine-looking fellows, unlike the Papuans, who inhabit the islands we were about to visit. As it was not likely that they could supply us with either cocoanut oil or sandal-wood, we did not communicate with them, but continued our ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... portrait of a familiar character in New Zealand, chief Mete Kingi, who recently died at the age of one hundred years. He was a fine specimen of the Maori race, the native New Zealanders, a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian family. The New Zealanders surpassed all other people in the art of tattooing, to which their chiefs gave especial attention. Mete Kingi, as our picture shows, was no exception. Tattooing on the face they termed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... the human means of preserving my life. My hat, my black clothes, my white neck-tie, and the hymn-book I carry would, I was convinced, secure for me a favourable reception among the natives (if of the gentle brown Polynesian type), whom I expected ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... moons. All is a ravening that never ends but to recommence. And unto whomsoever thinks about these matters, the story of a divine universe, made and ruled by paternal love, sounds less persuasive than the Polynesian tale that the souls of the dead are ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... use of spirituous liquors, large quantities of which are brought by the traders from Java and Macassar. From their language and personal appearance, the natives appear to be a mixture between the Malayan race and the Polynesian negro. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... vigour. The aspect of the land is flat and monotonous, so that a journey of one or two miles will give as fair an impression of the country as a complete tour of the island. The number of the population who have the true Polynesian cast of countenance may be put down at about 7000. D'Urville says "they combine the most opposite qualities. They are generous, courteous, and hospitable, yet avaricious, insolent, and always thoroughly insincere. The most profuse demonstration of kindness and friendship ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Polynesian Converts behindhand. The Native Churches in Mangaia have also given generous gifts, of which the ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... his knowledge of the Polynesian dialects sufficient to make himself in some degree understood by the natives of the new island. Under the guidance of the chief he had made a first journey of exploration, and had seen for himself that the place was a marvel ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... ours,—Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan,—possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of races and of climes. They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted all round their banks; ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... true son of the sun, and he flourished in all its ways. He merely became browner with the passing of the years, though in the brown was the hint of golden tint that glows in the skin of the Polynesian. Yet his blue eyes retained their blue, his mustache its yellow, and the lines of his face were those which had persisted through the centuries in his English race. English he was in blood, yet those that thought they knew contended he ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... distinct race from the Malay; but yet, as some of them inhabit a portion of the continent, and others the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, they must be considered to have had, in all probability, an Asiatic rather than a Polynesian origin. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... peculiar stone ruins remain as evidence of the existence of an ancient people of superior intelligence to the islanders of to-day. As to the meaning or use of these structures we are entirely in the dark. The natives of these groups know nothing concerning them, and the Polynesian builder in that dark past was too busy clubbing and eating his neighbour to write histories. Scientists are in doubt, as in the case of the great ruins at Metalanim, whether they were built as sacrificial altars or as monuments to ambitious chiefs, and there ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... Peninsula. It is spoken in all the states of the Peninsula, in Sumatra, Sunda, Java, Borneo, Celebes, Flores, Timor, and Timor Laut, the Moluccas, and the Philippines. Traces of it are found among the numerous Polynesian dialects, and in the language of the islanders of Formosa. Siam proper has a large Malay population, descendants mainly of captives taken in war, and the language is therefore in use there in places; it is found also here and there on the coasts and rivers of ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... on his approach the natives squatted down, as a mark of respect: a custom similar to which prevails in several of the Polynesian islands. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... show their relationship or identity with those of the Polynesians or Papuans. Curiously indeed, while the original stock of the Fijians was probably pure Papuan, their social and economic systems are now dominated by Polynesian ideas, and only among the mountain tribes do we find a clear expression of the crude Papuan systems of life and thought. This in itself shows that under stimulation the Fijians are capable of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... was kinky and negroid, and he was black. He was peculiarly black. He was neither blue-black nor purple-black, but plum-black. His name was Mauki, and he was the son of a chief. He had three tambos. Tambo is Melanesian for taboo, and is first cousin to that Polynesian word. Mauki's three tambos were as follows: First, he must never shake hands with a woman, nor have a woman's hand touch him or any of his personal belongings; secondly, he must never eat clams nor any food from a fire in which clams ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... no more called Jupiter by accident, than the Polynesian Maui, the Samoyede Num, or the Chinese Tien.(42) If we can discover the original meaning of these names, we have reached the first ground of their later growth. I do not say that, if we can explain the first purpose ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... eyeballs of O'Hara, bulging from out circular trenches round their sockets, surveyed Hogarth, weighing, divining him, while his bottom lip, massive as the mouth of Polynesian stone gods, trembled. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... of native comes under the rule of the Australian Commonwealth—the Papuan. Though Papua, or New Guinea, as it was once called, is only a few miles from the north coast of Australia, its race is distinct, belonging to the Polynesian or Kanaka type, and resembling the natives of Fiji ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... typified by the Australian fauna, refuting half our judicious assumptions of what nature allows. Still, whether fate commanded us to thatch our persons among the Eskimos or to choose the latest thing in tattooing among the Polynesian isles, our precious guide Comparison would teach us in the first place by likeness, and our clue to further knowledge would be resemblance to what we already know. Hence, having a keen interest in the natural history of my inward self, I pursue this plan I have ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... prevail down to now, on the Mariana, the Philippine and the Polynesian islands; according to Waitz, also among several African tribes. Another custom, prevalent till late on the Balearic islands, and indicative of the right of all men to a woman, was that, on the wedding night, the male kin had access to ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... of course, no patch upon it, but coiled up on the chest it really looks much the same. To be sure, there was no second velvet bag; but I replaced my stick with another quite like it, and I even found an empty cartridge to understudy the setting of the Polynesian pearl. You see the sort of fellow they have to show people round: do you think he's the kind to see the difference next time, or to connect it with us if he does? One left much the same things, lying much as ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... due to the subjection of Herakles to Eurystheus, to the anger of Poseidon at Odysseus, or to the curse laid upon the Wandering Jew. The barbaric mind has worked at the same problem; but the explanations which it has given are more childlike and more grotesque. A Polynesian myth tells how the Sun used to race through the sky so fast that men could not get enough daylight to hunt game for their subsistence. By and by an inventive genius, named Maui, conceived the idea of catching the Sun in ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... of the myth: breathing, vital soul, intelligence, and then the individual, the ego. In Polynesia we find the same process of things. To think, which in the Aryan tongues comes from the root c'i, and originally meant to collect, to comprehend, in German, begreifen, becomes in the Polynesian language, to talk in the belly. It is, therefore, an evident historical fact that man first personified natural phenomena, and then made use of these personifications to personify his inward acts, his psychical ideas and conceptions. This was the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... used by this interesting people are even to this day made entirely of wood, and have such a Polynesian look about them that I intend some time or other to bring some home and experiment on that learned Polynesian-culture-expert, Baron von Hugel, with them: — intellectually experiment, not ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Juan Fernandez Islands, where he judged it wise to stop, in order to recruit his men who were suffering from scurvy. As Magellan had done, Lemaire and Schouten passed without perceiving them amongst the principal Polynesian archipelagos, and cast anchor on the 10th April, at the Island of Dogs, where it was only possible to procure a little fresh water and some herbs. They hoped to reach the Solomon Islands, but in ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... the Seventh Century of the Atomic Era was to being pure anything. Lillian Ransby, almost ash-blond. Major Gofredo, barely over the minimum Service height requirement; his name was Old Terran Spanish, but his ancestry must have been Polynesian, Amerind and Mongolian. Karl Dorver, the sociographer, six feet six, with red hair. Bennet Fayon, the biologist and physiologist, plump, pink-faced and balding. Willi Schallenmacher, with a ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... leaves had been displaced during the night, but went on straight to Medlicot's Mill. He rode the nine miles in an hour, and at once entered the building in which the canes were crushed. The first man he met was Nokes, who acted as overseer, having a gang of Polynesian laborers under him—sleek, swarthy fellows from the South Sea Islands, with linen trowsers on and nothing else—who crept silently among the vats and machinery, shifting the sugar as ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... Polynesian paradise—a world seemingly without flaw except the subtle one of being too perfect, too welcoming, too wooing. Its long, uneventful, unchanging days enticed forgetfulness, offered a life without effort. Except for ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... power and rank, and all subordinate to a supreme God, a Zeus or Jupiter. The Vedic polytheism differs from the Greek and Roman polytheism, and, I may add, likewise from the polytheism of the Ural-Altaic, the Polynesian, the American, and most of the African races, in the same manner as a confederacy of village communities differs from a monarchy. There are traces of an earlier stage of village-community life to be discovered in the later republican and monarchical ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... they received it: and who are bound—remember that—patiently and lovingly to relight it for them; to give freely to all their fellow-men of that which God has given to them and to their ancestors; and let God, not man, be judge of how much the Red Indian or the Polynesian, the Caffre or the Chinese, is capable of ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... in the group, over all of which Raa Kook is king, although the cluster of islands to the south is restive and occasionally in revolt. These natives with whom I live are Polynesian, I know, because their hair is straight and black. Their skin is a sun-warm golden-brown. Their speech, which I speak uncommonly easy, is round and rich and musical, possessing a paucity of consonants, being composed principally of vowels. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... this time she had become a famous cook, and often prepared dinners fit to set before a king. She little thought then that some day she would break bread with real kings, even though they were but Polynesian monarchs. ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... whatsoever can be made to the deglutinatio Fijiana on the score of utility. The islands of the Fijians are but small; no Fijian Attila can lead forth his hosts into neighboring countries; no Fijian Goths can pour down from Polynesian Alps into an Oceanic Italy; no Athenians can there send sons and gods to a Coreyra: and no Fijian Miles Standish can there walk up and down before his pipe-clayed bandoleers in foreign colonies. How, then, can an over-increase of population be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... contributed many African tribes, including Arabs from Algeria and Tunis, Senegalese, Saharans, and many of the South African races. The red races of North America were represented in the armies of both Canada and the United States, while the Maoris, Samoans, and other Polynesian races were likewise represented. And as, in the American Army, there were men of German, Austrian, and Hungarian descent, and, in all probability, contingents also of Bulgarian and Turkish blood, it may be said that Foch commanded an army representing the whole human race, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... bore north-west to investigate the second clue, and in the Union Group he made his first important discovery of new land—Nukunono, inhabited by a branch of the Micronesian race, crossed with Polynesian blood. From thence he ran southward to Samoa, where he came upon traces of the massacre of La Perouse's second in command, M. de Langle, in the shape of accoutrements cut from the uniforms of the French officers. Consistent with his usual concentration ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... and she was pure Polynesian. From my meagre knowledge of the race and its types I could not but conclude that she had descended from old chief stock. She could not have been more than twenty- three or four. Her lines and proportions were magnificent, and she was just beginning to show the amplitude ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... as well as on later occasions, I noticed two distinct types among the Bororos: one purely Papuan or Polynesian; the other strongly Malay. The characteristics of those two different types showed themselves markedly in every instance. The majority were perhaps of the Malay type. I was intensely interested ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... are the result of a fusion of three elements: (1) the Polynesian, (2) the Malay-Bisya, and ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... there is also a considerable field for research, and some puzzling problems are presented. While Madagascar may be correctly termed "the great African island" as regards its geographical position, considered ethnologically, it is rather a Malayo-Polynesian island. Though so near Africa, it has but slight connection with the continent; the customs, traditions, language, and mental and physical characteristics of its people all tend to show that their ancestors came across the Indian Ocean from ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... with this, or any other race. In view of this failure it becomes a question of some moment whether a class of persons more nearly assimilated with the Hawaiian race, could not be induced to settle on our shores. It does not seem improbable that a portion of the inhabitants of other Polynesian groups might be disposed to come here, were suitable efforts made to lead them to such a step. In a few days they would speak our language with ease; they would be acclimated almost before they left the ships that conveyed ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... that seen in the gorilla. This skull, which was associated with remains of the cave-bear, hyena, and rhinoceros, is, with one exception, the most ape-like human relic yet found. Yet its cranial capacity is far above that of the highest apes, and is assimilated with that of Hottentot and Polynesian skulls. ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... are the information, interpretations, and instruction freely placed at his disposal by those connected with the museum, especially by Dr. Brigham, the former director, whose long and busy life has been devoted almost entirely to a study of the Polynesian groups; by Professor Gregory, the present director, who with tireless energy is the impelling force behind various lines of scientific research; by Mr. Stokes, curator of the ethnological department, who for more ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... determination which tried to fix without trickery the sincerest feelings. Amid many faulty and clumsy works Van Gogh has also left some really beautiful canvases." Before Gauguin went to Tahiti his Breton peasants were almost as monstrous as his later Polynesian types. His representations of trees also seem monstrous. His endeavour was to get beyond the other side of good and evil in art and create a new synthesis, and thus it came to pass that the ugly and the formless reign oft in his work—the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Polynesian race live on the holms of the "Island Cloud," a couple of hundred on each atoll. They gather pearls and mother-of-pearl, and barter them for European goods at a ridiculously low price. On some islands, bread-fruit trees, pineapples, and bananas are grown. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... of Brazil at the onset of puberty a girl must not go into the woods for fear of the amorous attacks of snakes, and so it is also among the Macusi Indians of British Guiana, according to Schomburgk. Among the Basutos of South Africa the young girls must dance around the clay image of a snake. In Polynesian mythology the lizard is a very sacred animal, and legends represent women as often giving birth to lizards.[357] At a widely remote spot, in Bengal, if you dream of a snake a child will be born to you, reports Sarat Chandra Mitra.[358] In the Berlin Museum ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... amount of ethnographic data derived from the Polynesian Islands, Micronesian Islands, Australia, etc., more than one-half of this important volume is devoted to philology, a large share relating to ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... in Polynesian, 'Queen Daughter.' My people, who know nothing as a rule, of course—but they tell me the woman is in actuality the daughter of a queen. But what is a Kanaka queen? After all, Signet, my dear sir, down there, what ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... persuaded to write down and publish certain curious experiences at Constantinople, in "Aziyade," a book which, like so many of Loti's, seems half a romance, half an autobiography. He proceeded to the South Seas, and, on leaving Tahiti, published the Polynesian idyl, originally called "Raharu," which was reprinted as "Le Mariage de Loti" (1880), and which first introduced to the wider public an author of remarkable originality and charm. Loti now became extremely prolific, and in a succession of volumes ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... On my first night on the Ingodah the fleas did not disturb me as I came after visiting hours and was not introduced. On all subsequent nights they were persevering and relentless; I was bitten until portions of my body appeared as if recovering from a Polynesian tattoo. They used to get inside my under clothing by some mysterious way and when there they walked up and down like sentries on duty and bit at every other step. It was impossible to flee from them, and they appointed their breakfasts and ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Christian era, all facts testify. If they are not older as a people, than most of the present nations on the Asiatic shores of the Indian ocean, as has been suggested, they are certainly anterior in age, to the various groups of the Polynesian islands. They have, it is apprehended, taken the impress of their character and mental ideocracy from the early tribes of Western Asia, which was originally peopled, to a great extent, by the descendants of Shem. These fierce tribes crowded each other, ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... feeding-grounds were made accessible by rail was he ever guilty. He managed his hunts systematically, placed them under the rigid control of a sort of guild known as "dog-soldiers," and allowed to be slain only what were needed for his wants. The buffalo was to him what the cocoa-palm is to the Polynesian; and more, for he needed warm shelter and warm clothing. He cared for it accordingly. It grew around him almost as the cocoa-grove around the hut of the islander. A herd will even now graze quietly for days in the neighborhood of an Indian village of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... be likely to know them. The lagoons around the Polynesian islands—the still waters within the barrier-reefs, you understand—are lined with most gorgeous and wonderful displays of this kind. One seems to be sailing over a mine of gems—only not in the rough, but already cut ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... would have been illimitable. He was dressed in a brown cassock, and looked like the blue-eyed man who had been refused passage to my destination. Probably, that American in the toga and sandals, exiled from the island he loved so well, had a message for the Tahitians or others of the Polynesian tribes of the South Seas; Essenism, maybe, or something to do with virginal beards and long hair, or sandals and the simple life. I wished ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... to my surprise, enough of the words were familiar to enable me clearly to catch the meaning of the whole. They were Polynesian, the Polynesian of the Samoans which is its most ancient form, but in some indefinable way—archaic. Later I was to know that the tongue bore the same relation to the Polynesian of today as does not that of Chaucer, but of the Venerable Bede, to modern English. Nor was this to be ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt |
