102 Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 



superior to any found among the more numerous and civilised 

 tribes inhabiting the South Sea Islands. These monuments con- 

 sist in a number of terraces and platforms built with stones, cut 

 and fixed with great exactness and skill, forming, though desti- 

 tute of cement, a strong durable pile. On these terraces are 

 fixed colossal figures or busts. They appear to be monuments 

 erected in memory of ancient kings or chiefs, as each bust or 

 column had a distinct name. One of these, of which Porster 

 took the dimensions, consisted of a single stone twenty-fire feet 

 high, and four wide, and represented a human figure to the waist ; 

 on the crown of the head a stone of cylindrical shape was placed 

 erect : this stone was of a different colour from the rest of the 

 figure, which appeared to be formed of a kind of cellular lava. 

 In one place, some of these statues or busts stood together ; one 

 which they saw lying on the ground, was twenty-seven feet long, 

 and nine in diameter." 



Monuments of a similar and colossal character are found also 

 in other groups of the South Sea Islands, besides those I have 

 alluded to, and particularly in the Marquesas Islands, situated 

 between the 8th and 10th degrees of south latitude and in 140 - 

 west longitude. " At the base of one of the mountains," observes 

 Mr. Herman Melville, an intelligent American mariner, the 

 author of a work entitled ' Typee, or a narrative of four months' 

 residence among the natives of a valley of the Marquesas Islands' 

 — " At the base of one of the mountains, and surrounded on all 

 sides by dense grass, a series of vast terraces of stone rise, step 

 by step, for a considerable distance up the hill side. These 

 terraces cannot be less than one hundred yards in length and 

 twenty in width. Their magnitude, however, is less striking 

 than the immense size of the blocks composing them. Some of 

 the stones, of an oblong shape, are from ten to fifteen feet in 

 length, and five or six feet thick. Their sides are quite smooth ; 

 but, though square, and of pretty regular formation, they bear 

 no mark of the chisel. They are laid together without cement, 

 and here and there show gaps between. The topmost terrace 

 and the lower one are somewhat peculiar in their construction. 

 They have both a quadrangular depression in the centre; leaving 

 the rest of the terrace elevated several feet above it. In the 

 intervals of the stones immense trees have taken root, and their 

 broad boughs, stretching far over, and interlacing together, sup- 

 port a canopy almost impenetrable to the sun. Overgrowing the 

 greater part of them, and climbing from one to another, is a 

 wilderness of vines, in whose sinewy embrace many of the stones 

 lie half-hidden, while in some places a thick growth of bushes 

 entirely covers them. There is a wild pathway which obliquely 

 crosses two of these terraces, and so profound is the ' shade, so 



