Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ixvi. (1922), No. 4 7 



go to the east and fetch a piece of the stone that which I have 

 planted in the ground, a heritage of your forefathers." These 

 people of old have left stonework behind them in Central 

 Celebes, in the shape of stone images, dolmens, and so forth. 

 Some of these images are of a kind of stone not to be found 

 in the neighbourhood, which makes it probable that, like the 

 image in the other story, they have been transported from a 

 previous home. This custom is well known in the island of 

 Nias, west of Sumatra, noteworthy for its stonework. When 

 a new village is to be made sacred stones are brought from 

 the former site. This custom is doubtless responsible for the 

 presence of a large stone of igneous formation on a coral 

 island at Kei, just west of New Guinea (10, 46-8). It is used 

 in ceremonial by folk that obviously came across the sea. 



The most notable ruins of the Pacific are those of Micro- 

 nesia. At Ponape in the Carolines, and at Kusaie and else- 

 where, are remains of great works. At Ponape there was 

 formerly an artificial Venice constructed of large blocks of 

 stone. People who made such ruins must have had good 

 reason for settling in such a place. It is said that the founders 

 of Ponape came across the sea from Yap, an island many 

 miles away to the west, floating on stones, and that they made 

 the settlement of Ponape where the stones stranded on the 

 reef. The people of Yap make much use of stone money, 

 which they formerly got from the Pelews, three hundred miles 

 away across the sea. Thus they actually had the custom of 

 transportation of stones, and the tradition of Ponape rests 

 upon some foundation of fact. 



Elsewhere in the Pacific signs exist of the transportation 

 of stones. This is so in Tongatabu, where it is known 

 that large stones have been brought across the sea at some 

 time in the past. The great trilithon is said by some to have 

 been made of stones thus transported, but this is disputed. 

 The most notable instance of transportation of stones is 

 that of the region round Tahiti in the Eastern Pacific. The 

 great pyramidal building, or maras, at Opoa in Raiatea, an 

 island in the neighbourhood of Tahiti, was the great meeting- 

 place for the whole of the Eastern Pacific, to which came, at 

 regular intervals, the chiefs from island groups thousands of 

 miles distant, in their great canoes that carried 170 or more 

 people, with banners flying, to join in festivities. It is said 

 that, when a new marcs was made in any place, a stone was 

 taken from the marcB of Opoa to form, as it were, the founda- 

 tion stone of the new structure (9). 



It is thus evident that the use of stone by people such as 



