EuTLAND. — History of the Pacific. 45 



the Province of Eedu, illustrates this advance : " This temple 

 is built upon a small hill, and consists of a central dome and 

 seven ranges of terraced walls covering the slope of the hill, 

 and forming sloping galleries, each below the other, and 

 communicating by steps and gateways. The central dome is 

 50ft. in diameter ; around it is a triple circle of seventy-two 

 towers ; and the whole building is 620ft. square, and about 

 100ft. high. In the terraced walls are niches, containing 

 cross-legged figures larger than life, to the number of about 

 four hundred, and both sides of all the terraced walls are 

 covered with bas-reliefs crowded with figures and carved in 

 hard stone, and which must therefore occupy an extent of 

 nearly three miles in length. The amount of human labour 

 and skill expended on the Great Pyramid of Egypt sinks into 

 insignificance when compared with that required to complete 

 this sculptured hill-temple in the interior of Java."''' 



When in the Old World the builder's art had only reached 

 the stage of development indicated by the Polynesian monu- 

 ments, the use of iron was undiscovered, and stone implements 

 had not been discarded. Bronze nowhere entirely superseded 

 stone ; in Peru and Mexico stone and bronze weapons and 

 implements were employed at the time of the Spanish invasion. 

 In the Peninsula of Sinai, where during many centuries the 

 ancient Egyptians mined for copper and other minerals, 

 quantities of arrow-heads and other stone implements have 

 been recovered from the ruins of buildings connected with the 

 mines. Inscriptions on these buildings show that, when these 

 stone articles were in use, bronze ornaments and utensils were 

 common in the cities of the Nile Valley. f 



We can now readily perceive how a people dependent on 

 foreign countries for a supply of metal might be forced to 

 relapse from the use of bronze and stone implements into the 

 exclusive use of stone, and how arts incapable of being carried 

 on without metal tools would perish, while other arts survived. 



What we particularly gather from the cultivated plants 

 and domesticated animals of Polynesia is that in the history of 

 the Pacific there was a period during which the region was in 

 communication with the Malay Islands, and probably with the 

 Asiatic mainland, and that this period was followed by a long 

 interval of isolation, terminated only by the advent of 

 Europeans. 



From traces discovered outside the Pacific of the primitive 

 Polynesian arts, there is reason to suspect that the more 

 civilized inhabitants of the region, when they crossed the 

 great ocean and colonised its countless islands, were on a par 



*" Malay Archipelago." Wallace, 

 t " Sinai." Major Palmer. 



