spirit of Toogoo Ahoo? His answer was, 'There's a fool! How can
I tell you how I knew it! I felt and knew it was so by a
kind of consciousness; my mind told me that it was Toogoo
Ahoo (vol. i. pp. 104, 105).


Finow's son was evidently made for a theological disputant, and
fell back at once on the inexpugnable stronghold of faith when
other evidence was lacking. "There's a fool! I know it is true,
because I know it," is the exemplar and epitome of the sceptic-
crushing process in other places than the Tonga Islands.

The island of Bolotoo, to which all the souls (of the upper
classes at any rate) repair after the death of the body, and
from which they return at will to interfere, for good or evil,
with the lives of those whom they have left behind, obviously
answers to Sheol. In Tongan tradition, this place of souls is a
sort of elysium above ground and pleasant enough to live in.
But, in other parts of Polynesia, the corresponding locality,
which is called Po, has to be reached by descending into the
earth, and is represented dark and gloomy like Sheol. But it was
not looked upon as a place of rewards and punishments in any
sense. Whether in Bolotoo or in Po, the soul took the rank it
had in the flesh; and, a shadow, lived among the shadows of the
friends and houses and food of its previous life.

The Tongan theologians recognised several hundred gods;
but there was one, already mentioned as their national god, whom
they regarded as far greater than any of the others, "as a great
chief from the top of the sky down to the bottom of the earth"