CHAPTER XXI 



A heathen temple— The great Marae of Oberea— I visit it with Rupert 

 Brooke and Chief Tetuanui — The Tahitian religion of old — The wisdom 

 of folly. 



READING one day from Captain Cook's Voy- 

 ages about a heathen temple not far from 

 Mataiea which Cook had visited, I suggested 

 to Brooke that we go to it. None of the Tetuanui 

 younger folk had seen it, but Haamoura directed us to 

 return toward Papara as far as the thirty-ninth kilo- 

 meter-stone, and to strike from that point towards the 

 beach. Cook had had a sincere friendship, if not a 

 sweeter sentiment, for Oberea, the high chiefess of the 

 clan of Tevas at Papara, and whom at first he thought 

 queen of Tahiti. He described her as "forty years of 

 age, her figure large and tall, her skin white, and her 

 eyes with great expression." That handsome lady had 

 led him a merry chase, her complacent husband, Oamo, 

 abetting her in the manner of Polynesia, where women 

 must have their fling. The temple Cook and his offi- 

 cers inspected was the tribal church of the noble pair. 

 The Voyages say: 



The morai consisted of an enormous pile of stone work, 



raised in the form of a pyramid with a flight of steps on each 



side, and was nearly two hundred and seventy feet long, about 



one-third as wide, and between forty and fifty feet high. As 



the Indians were totally destitute of iron utensils to shape their 



stones, as well as mortar to cement them when they had made 



441 



