SINGULAR SUBSTITUTES FOR BELLS. 385 
actually used for these purposes in Oahu, during 
my residence there, and consider it one of the most 
interesting curiosities which I was enabled to de- 
posit 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 parau 
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 consider- 
ably battered 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, re- 
sembling 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. Ors- 
mond’s settlement there, their only substitute 
for a bell was a broad carpenter's axe. The 
handle was taken out, a string passed through 
the eye, and when the inhabitants were to 
iit 2c 
