202 JOSHUA RUTLAND, ESQ., ON 
perfecting of the steam engine during the present century. 
Besides this it would give to the people by whom the art was 
first understood, and who had the necessary materials at their 
command, an advantage over the rest of mankind. This may 
account for the extraordinary precocity of the yellow race, 
so frequently commented on, and for the south-eastern 
extremity of the Asiatic mainland being such an ancient 
centre of an indigenous civilization. 
Returning again to Polynesia, it is generally agreed that 
the ancient monuments in their style of architecture corre- 
spond with monuments of the bronze period in both the Old 
and New World. Many of these structures so closely resemble 
ancient Peruvian temples, some writers have concluded from 
them that the islands were first peopled from the American 
continent, while others, recognizing in them a likeness to 
early Japanese and yee South Asiatic monuments, attribute 
them to an Old World people. Though all the Polynesian 
monuments are of the same rude cyclopean order, they differ 
much in design. The tomb of Toobatoi, in Tonga-tapu, is 
merely a cromlech, the large stones being: jomted or dove- 
tailed together. The colossal statues of “Easter Island call 
to mind the gigantic statues of Buddha, common throughout 
the regions wherein the religion prevails. The Pyramid of 
Morai or Oberai, in Tahiti, “regarding which Captain Cook 
wrote in his journal, “The outside was faced partly with 
hewn stones and partly with others, and these were placed 
in such a manner as to look very agreeable to the eye,” 
transports us to Mexico on the one side and to Chaldea and 
Egypt on the other. In the great Morais found throughout 
all the groups we have ina rude form the open temples of 
antiquity, amongst which the temple of Solomon must be 
classed. 
The most important feature in the religion of Eastern 
Polynesia was human sacrifice, frequently accompanied by 
cannibalism. Excepting Mexico at the period of the Spanish 
conquest, we have no direct knowledge of any place where 
these rites were practised on such an extensive scale. 
Though human sacrifice was at some period practised in 
every “quarter of the globe, it has long been discarded in the 
Old World, excepting amongst rude tribes like the Khands 
of Orissa. 
None of the four great religions, Brahminism, Buddhism, 
Christianity, or Mahomedanism, that have dominated civilized 
nations during the last two thousand years, countenance it, 
