A description of barbarous beliefs not less scholarly and careful than that compiled by Dr. Hahn has been published by the Rev. R. H. Codrington.* Mr. Codrington has studied the myths of the Papuans and other natives of the Melanesian group, especially in the Solomon Islands and Banks Island. These peoples are by no means in the lowest grade of culture; they are traders in their way, builders of canoes and houses, and their society is interpenetrated by a kind of mystic hierarchy, a religious _Camorra_. The Banks Islanders** recognise two sorts of intelligent extra-natural beings--the spirits of the dead and powers which have never been human. * Journal Anthrop. Inst., February, 1881. ** Op. cit., p. 267. The former are _Tamate_, the latter _Vui_--ghosts and _genii_, we might call them. Vuis are classed by Mr. Codrington as "corporeal" and "incorporeal," but he thinks the corporeal Vuis have not _human_ bodies. Among corporeal Vuis the chief are the beings nearest to gods in Melanesian myths--the half god, half "culture-hero," I Qat, his eleven brothers, and his familiar and assistant, Marawa. These were members of a race anterior to that of the men of to-day, and they dwelt in Vanua Levu. Though now passed away from the eyes of mortals, they are still invoked in prayer. The following appeal by a voyaging Banks Islander resembles the cry of the shipwrecked Odysseus to the friendly river:-- "Qat! Marawa! look down upon us; smooth the sea for us two, that I may go safely on the sea. Beat down for me the crests of the tide-rip; let the tide-rip settle down away from me; beat it down level that it may sink and roll away, and I may come to a quiet landing-place." Compare the prayer of Odysseus:-- "'Hear me, O king, whosoever thou art; unto thee am I come as to one to whom prayer is made, while I flee the rebukes of Poseidon from the deep....' So spake he, and the god straightway stayed his stream and withheld his waves, and made the water smooth before him, and brought him safely to the mouth of the river." But for Qat's supernatural power and creative exploits,* "there would be little indeed to show him other than a man". He answers almost precisely to Maui, the "the culture-hero" of New Zealand. Qat's mother either was, or, like Niobe, became a stone. * See "Savage Myths of the Origin of Things".