POJaXER^S JOURNAL, 



we consider the vast labour requisite, to bring from a 

 distance the enormous rocks, which form the foundation of 

 these structures (forthej are all brought from the sea side, 

 and many of them are eight feet long, and four feet thick 

 and wide) and reflect on the means used in hewing them 

 into such perfect forms, with tools perhaps little harder, 

 than the materials worked on, for the appearance of many 

 of these places strongly mark their antiquity, and their 

 origin can, no doubt, be traced to a period antecedent to 

 their knowledge of iron ; and when we count the immense 

 numbers of such places, which are every where to be met 

 with, our astonishment is raised to the highest, that a 

 people in a state of nature, unassisted by any of those arti- 

 ficial means, which so much assist and facilitate the labour 

 of the civilized man, could have conceived, and executed 

 a work, which, to every beholder, must appear stupendous. 

 These piles are raised with views to magnificence alone ; 

 there does not appear to be the slightest utility attending 

 them : the houses situated on them are unoccupied, ex- 

 cept during the period of feasting, and they appear to be- 

 long to a public, without the whole etforts of which, they 

 could not have been raised, and with every exertion that 

 could possibly have been made, years must have been re- 

 quisite for the completion of them. 



These public houses differ not much from the houses 

 belonging to individuals, except in the degree of elegfince 

 with which they are finished. Those which I have now 

 in view to describe, are situated round a public square, 

 high up the valley of the Havvouhs, and are sixteen in 

 number. Four large pillars, neatly formed of the bread- 

 fruit tree, are planted in the ground, extending to the 

 height of twenty feet above the surface ; in the upper end 

 is a crutch for the reception of a long and slender cocoa- 

 nut tree, which is neatly polished : this forms the ridge- 

 pole of the houses, and is the chief support of the struc- 

 ture. From this ridge-pole, with the lower ends inclining 

 out about five feet, are placed bamboos, of equal sizes, at 

 the distance of two or three inches asunder, with the low- 

 er ends planted in the ground ; and to give them addi- 

 tional stability, they are neatly and firmly secured by turns 

 of different coloured sinnet to the well-polished trunk of 

 a cocoa-nut tree : across this row of bamboos is lashed. 



