Note 92 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
In one of the fabulous legends of the natives of the Island of Tahiti, their island is represented “as having been a shark, originally from Raitea. Matarafau, in the east, was the head; and a place near Faaa, on the west, was the tail; the large lake Vaihiria was the ventricles or gills; while the lofty Orehena, the highest mountain in the island, probably six or seven thousand feet above the sea, was regarded as its dorsal fin; and its ventral fin was Matavai.”—Ellis’s Polynesian Researches, vol. i. page 167.