THE TWO EACES WHICH PEOPLED POLYNESIA. 
29 
cannot build large bouses as they did : they were numerous 
and wise, we are neither one nor the other.” Still, they use 
tools of green jade, and make coarse pottery, varnishing it 
with the gum of the damara, and painting it with red ochre. 
Dr. Hotchstetter, the geologist of the Novara, writing of 
the monumental ruins in the interior of Puynipet Island, 
says: “We were informed that they consisted of nothing 
more than a large number of colossal rough hewn blocks of 
basalt in the heart of the forest, near Metelenia harbour, 
and that the character of the ruins evidences a high state of 
civilization in those who erected them. Some of the blocks 
are eight or ten feet long hexagonal, and must evidently 
have been brought from other parts, since with the exception 
of these, there are no other stones of a similar description 
found in any part of the island; streets are laid out at various 
points, and the settlement seems to have consisted of a 
range of strongly fortified dwellings.” 
These columns and blocks however possess a special in- 
terest not merely in the history of civilization but of geology, 
as a part is at present under water, and can only be reached 
in canoes. Similar ruins are described by Captain Cheyne, 
as having been also found in the forests of Nalan, Strong’s 
Island, one of the Caroline Archipelago, latitude 5° 21' 30" 
N., and 163° 0' 42" E. Ion * 
But the most singular remains are those of Ascension or 
Ponapi, an island of the same group, and not far from the 
former, being in latitude 7° N. and Ion. E. 157° 50'. The 
the Bev. C. W. Clark wrote an account of them in the 
Honolulu paper, he visited them in 1852. “ There are 
two quadrangular walls, one within the other, 236 feet 
by 162, the walls are from six to ten feet thick, and in 
some places they are twenty-five feet high. In front of 
the inner enclosure, facing the entrance to the outer, is a 
raised platform, ten or twelve feet wide ; the inner walls are 
about fourteen feet high and six feet thick, the top rows are 
of basaltic prisms, of which the wall is built, projecting 
over about two feet, the inner enclosure is 95 feet by 75. 
* Voyage of the Novara, vol. 2, p. 584, 585. 
