364 THE MAKAE. 



little garden-plots bearing an appearance of even English neatness. 

 Busy hands were at work destroying these, and in hunting out the 

 women and children who had taken refuge in the woods and rocks 

 around them. 



Our journey was continued till near sunset, when we came in sight 

 of the great national marae, in which 1 doubted not my earthly pil- 

 grimage was to terminate. It wa-s seated on a bold promontory, 

 and surrounded by groves of large overshadowing trees, whose 

 luxuriant and intertwined foliage gave a gloomy and impressive 

 look, when it was visited under the most favourable auspices: but 

 now, fettered and guarded, in the darkening hour of twilight, with 

 the knowledge of my fate, joined to the mystic and sanguinary rites 

 carried on within it, its appearance seemed to my excited fancy most 

 awful ; and I do not know that my spirit was ever more completely 

 eowed and oppressed, than when I entered the gateway of the 

 temple. It was a gigantic building composed of coral-rock, rude m 

 its architecture, but imposing from its size, and still more so from 

 the services to which it was dedicated. 



A few words having been interchanged between the priests and my 

 guards, I was placed in the custody of the former r and the warriors 

 hastened away to new scenes of carnage. I was conveyed into an 

 pen part of the temple, after suffering some barbarous treatment, 

 and secured in a way that put all idea of escape out of the question, 

 A large post was fixed in the centre of the area, to which 1 was 

 bound by a long cord, the turns beginning at the neck and being 

 continued to my ancles ; my arms were included, and the cords 

 drawn so tightly as to give me exquisite torture. No part was at 

 liberty but my head, and the compressed muscles and blood-vessels 

 seemed ready to burst. It was now dark r and as the priests moved 

 about me by torchlight, they gave me no faint idea of demons. After 

 they had thus bound me, I was left alone in my misery, with the 

 certainty of passing many hours in a state of suffering utterly in- 

 describable. The tightness of the cord for some time appeared to 

 increase; the parts swelled on account of the severe injury they 

 sustained from the pressure ; the pain was dreadful, and I invoked 

 death in screaras of agony. How long I remained in this state of 

 frenzied torture, I know not. At length the very intensity of the 

 pressure proved to some extent its own cure, and I became be- 

 numbed, and almost lost to sensation. Even this feeling was dread- 

 fully overpowering; and, as I vainly writhed my aching limbs, I 

 would have exchanged years of life, had they been in my possession, 

 for one moment's alleviation of my sufferings. 



By a strong effort I recalled my senses, and strove to think : the 

 night was lovely ; and as I looked up and felt the cool breeze 

 rush over my face, its grateful influence acted as a cordial upon my 

 exhausted spirits. I gazed at the magnificent sky of the southern 

 hemisphere ; that beautiful constellation the Cross was near its meri- 

 dian, and stood erect before me, a type of my religious hopes : I had 

 never looked on this sign without emotions of a sacred and holy 

 character ; and now in my cruel and desolate condition, without one 

 human being to sympathise with or assist me, I felt the full force ai' 



