274 CORALS AND CORAL ISLANDS. 



and has already been described (p. 168). The grove of cocoa- 

 nut trees contains the sacred or public house of the island — 

 a well-made structure measuring fifty feet by thirty- five in 

 length and breadth, and twenty feet in height. In front of 

 the building stands the deity of the place, consisting of a 

 block of stone fourteen feet high, enveloped in mats ; and also 

 near by, a smaller idol, partially covered with matting. In 

 the left corner there is a young cocoanut palm — usually a more 

 beautiful object than the full-grown tree. 



This island and the two others near it were among the 

 few, perhaps the last, examples that remained until 1840, 

 of Pacific lands never before visited by the white man. 

 The people therefore were in that purely savage state which 

 Captain Cook found almost universal through the ocean in 

 the latter part of last century. A few words respecting our 

 reception at this coral island, may not, therefore, be an im- 

 proper digression. 



The islanders knew nothing of any other land or people ; 

 — an ignorance not surprising, since the lagoons of the group 

 have no good entrances, and a nation cannot be great in nav- 

 igation or discovery without harbors. As a consequence, our 

 presence was to them like an apparition. The simple in- 

 habitants took us for gods from the sun, and, as we landed, 

 came with abundant gifts of such things as they had, to pro- 

 pitiate their celestial visitors. They, no doubt, imagined that 

 our strange ship had sailed off from the sun when it touched 

 the water at sunrise, or sunset, and any child among them 

 could see that this was a reasonable supposition. The king, 

 after embracing Captain Hudson, as the latter states in his 

 Journal (Wilkes's Narrative), rubbed noses, pointed to the 

 sun, howled, moaned, hugged him again and again, put a mat 

 around his waist, securing it with a cord of human hair, and 



