112 Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 



stones, without lime or cement of any hind. The roof was formed 

 of large slabs of the same black basalt, lying as regularly, and 

 jointed as closely, as if the workmen had only just completed 

 them. They measured twelve feet in length, eighteen inches in 

 breadth, and six inches in thickness. "§ Precisely similar is the 

 account which the American, Herman Melville, gives of the 

 colossal remains in the Marquesas Islands, as quoted at length in 

 a former part of my lecture. " A series of vast terraces of stone 

 rises 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 in the account of the remarkable colossal remains in Easter 

 Island, also already quoted, the same very singular circumstance 

 is observable. " These monuments consist in a number of terraces 

 or platforms built with stone, cut and fixed with great exactness 

 and skill, forming, though destitute 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. "f Although many of the South Sea Islands consist of 

 vast masses of coral, and are surrounded with coral reefs, the 

 natives never had in any instance learned the art of burning the 

 coral into lime ; and when taught the process by the missionaries, 

 they testified alike their astonishment and delight. The colossal 

 terraces, I may add, described in the last two quotations, are 

 exactly similar to those described and figured by Stephens in his 

 account of the ruined Indo- American cities of Copan, Palenque, 

 and Uxmal. I quite agree, however, with Mr. Stephens, in 

 regarding these cities as of a compai'atively modern date, and as 

 having been inhabited in all likelihood down to the era of the 

 Spanish conquest ; first, because there are wooden lintels still 

 remaining in some of the ruinous buildings ; and, secondly, 

 because the walls are cemented wich mortar, and covered with 

 stucco. For in the more ancient buildings of that continent, as 

 on the shores of the Lake Titicaca, in Peru, there is no cement 

 used. Spanish writers describe the remains of an ancient 

 Peruvian temple, consisting of an enclosed space, open at the 

 top, of which the walls are about twelve feet in height, and con- 

 sist of stones of an immense size, some of them being thirty feet 

 long, eighteen broad, and six feet thick. These stones are cemented 



§ The Giant Cities of Baskan, London 1867, page 26. 



* Typee, page 173. 



t Ellis's Polynesian Kesearches, iii., 326. 



