POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
Ill 
poses in Oahu^ during my residence^ and consider it one 
of the most interesting curiosities which I was enabled 
to deposit in the Missionary Museum. 
At Eimeo, a thick hoop of iron, resembling the tier of 
a small carriage-wheel, suspended by a rope of twisted 
bark, and struck with an iron bolt, was substituted for 
a bell. At Huahine, during the greater part of my 
residence there, we had a square bar of iron hanging, 
by a cord of purau bark, from a high cocoa-nut tree 
that grew near the chapel | and our only means of calling 
the inhabitants of the settlement together was, by ap¬ 
pointing a person, at the proper hour, to strike it several 
minutes with a hard stone. It had been so long in 
use, that the bar of iron was considerably battered, and 
almost flattened by the blows. 
The Missionaries at Raiatea procured what is called 
a pig of cast-iron ballast, a solid piece about three or 
four feet long, and six or nine inches square, with a 
hole through one end. Near the chapel they erected 
a low frame, consisting of two upright posts, and a cross¬ 
piece at the top, resembling a gallows, from the centre 
of which the pig of iron was suspended^ and when 
used, struck with a stone. What the natives thought 
of it I do not know, but to those who were accustomed 
to associate with a gallows, and any object so attached 
to it, only ideas of an execution, or of a criminal hung 
in irons, its appearance was not adapted to awaken 
very gratifying feelings. 
At Borabora, for a long time after Mr. Orsmond’s set¬ 
tlement there, their only substitute for a bell was a 
broad carpenter’s axe. The handle was taken out, a 
string of braided cinet passed through the eye, and 
when the inhabitants were to assemble, a native boy 
