352 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 



request. I met a beachcomber named Wilson, who had resided 

 for a long time in Kusaie ; but owing to a ' family ' dispute, he 

 had left the Carolines, and settled in the Marquesas at the 

 other end of the Pacific. He told me he had received nothing 

 but kindness from the Caroline islanders, and such is the general 

 testimony of men who know how to conduct themselves among 

 Polynesian races with tolerable decency. 



When a chief dies, they make a mummy of the body, and 

 swathe it in coloured bandages. It is watched for a whole 

 year, a fire being kept beside it, which is never allowed to go 

 out. Eecords are kept by wooden beads and knotted cords, 

 which they carefully preserve and refer to when they want to 

 tell what happened in a bygone time. 



The timber of their houses is invariably squared. They 

 possessed, from remote times, the arts of pottery and weaving 

 with a loom ; and the traditions they repeat of their ancestors, 

 point to the conclusion that at some very distant date they 

 were a rich, numerous, and powerful people. 



The ruins in Kusaie were supposed, by early writers on the 

 Pacific, to be the work of Spanish buccaneers ; but this is an 

 almost ludicrous supposition, inasmuch as D'Urville says ' that 

 the stones measure 8 and 10 feet in length, are squared upon 

 six sides, and have evidently been brought hither from some 

 other country, there being no other stone in the island similar 

 to them ;' whereas Mr. Sterndale, who eight years ago stayed 

 on the island, says : ' The stones are in many cases much larger 

 than here described, in fact as large again. They are basaltic 

 prisms quarried on the land itself, as I have seen. It would 

 have taken all the labour of the Spanish pirates, from the days 

 of Balboa till now, to build all the monstrous works that exist 

 in Strong Island.' 



Kusaie, or Strong Island, is exceedingly productive, espe- 



