192 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
inhabitants a few miles inland, than nearer the 
sea, we thought it best to direct our course 
towards the mountains. Makoa, our guide, pro¬ 
cured men to carry our baggage, and at nine a. m. 
we left Tairitii. Our way lay over a bed of an¬ 
cient lava, smooth, considerably decomposed, and 
generally covered with a thin layer of soil. We 
passed along the edge of a more recent stream of 
lava, rugged, black, and appalling in its aspect, 
compared with the tract we were walking over, 
which here and there showed a green tuft of grass, 
a straggling shrub, or a creeping convolvulus. 
After travelling about a mile, we reached the foot 
of a steep precipice. A winding path led to its 
top, up which we pursued our way, occasionally 
resting beneath the shade of huge overhanging 
rocks. This precipice is about three hundred feet 
high, and the rocks, on fracture, proved a dark 
grey kind of lava, more compact than that on the 
adjacent plain. The whole pile appears to have 
been formed by successive eruptions from some 
volcano in the interior, as there appeared to be a 
thin layer of soil between some of the strata, or 
different inundations, which we supposed had been 
produced by the decomposition of the lava on the 
surface of the lower stratum, before it was over¬ 
flowed by the superincumbent mass. The rocks 
appeared to have been rent in a line from the 
sea-shore towards the mountains, and probably 
the same convulsion which burst the rocks asunder, 
sunk the plain to its present level. In half an 
hour we reached its summit. 
A beautiful country now appeared before us, 
and we seemed all at once transported to some 
happier island, where the devastations attributed 
to Nahoaarii and Pele, deities of the volcanoes* 
