360 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
pulpit, the seats were in the form of low boarded 
pews neatly finished. Behind them appeared a 
kind of open, or trellis-work line of pews, which 
were followed by several rows of benches with 
backs; and, still more remote from the pulpit, 
what might be called free or unappropriated 
sittings, were solid benches or forms, without any 
support for the back or arms. 
The colour and the kind of wood, used in the 
interior, was as diversified as the forms in which it 
was employed; it was, nevertheless, only when 
empty, that its irregularity and grotesque variety 
appeared. When well filled with respectably 
dressed worshippers, as it generally was on the 
Sabbath, the difference in the material or structure 
of the places they occupied, was not easily 
noticed. 
A remarkably ingenious and durable low fence, 
called by the natives aumoa , was erected round it, 
and the area within the enclosure was covered 
with small fragments of white branching coral, 
called anaana , and found on the northern shores 
of the bay. 
In the month of April, 1820, it was finished, and 
on the 3d of May opened for Divine service. 
A distressing epidemic had raged for some time 
among the people, and still confined many to their 
habitations, yet there were not fewer than fifteen 
hundred present. Many of them were arrayed in 
light European dresses, and all evidently appeared 
to feel a high degree of satisfaction in assem¬ 
bling for the public adoration of the Almighty 
in a building, in many respects an object of 
astonishment through the island, and which their 
own toil and perseverance had enabled them to 
finish. 
