was announced. I have this tale of the priest on one
authority--I think a good one,--but I set it down with diffidence. The
particulars are so striking that, had they been true, I almost think I
must have heard them oftener referred to. Upon one point there seems to
be no question: that the feast was sometimes furnished from within the
clan. In times of scarcity, all who were not protected by their family
connections--in the Highland expression, all the commons of the
clan--had cause to tremble. It was vain to resist, it was useless to
flee. They were begirt upon all hands by cannibals; and the oven was
ready to smoke for them abroad in the country of their foes, or at home
in the valley of their fathers.

At a certain corner of the road our scholar-guide struck off to his left
into the twilight of the forest. We were now on one of the ancient
native roads, plunged in a high vault of wood, and clambering, it
seemed, at random over boulders and dead trees; but the lad wound in and
out and up and down without a check, for these paths are to the natives
as marked as the king's highway is to us; insomuch that, in the days of
the man-hunt, it was their labour rather to block and deface than to
improve them. In the crypt of the wood the air was clammy and hot and
cold; overhead, upon the leaves, the tropical rain uproariously poured,
but only here and there, as through holes in a leaky roof, a single drop
would fall, and make a spot upon my mackintosh. Presently the huge trunk
of a banyan hove in sight, standing upon what seemed the ruins of an
ancient fort; and our guide, halting and holding forth his arm,
announced that we had reached the _paepae tapu_.

_Paepae_ signifies a floor or platform such as a native house is built
on; and even such a paepae--a paepae hae--may be called a paepae tapu in
a lesser sense when it is deserted and becomes the haunt of spirits; but
the public high place, such as I was now treading, was a thing on a
great scale. As far as my eyes could pierce through the dark
undergrowth, the floor of the forest was all paved. Three tiers of
terrace ran on the slope of the hill; in front, a crumbling parapet
contained the main arena; and the pavement of that was pierced and
parcelled out with several wells and small enclosures. No trace remained
of any superstructure, and the scheme of the amphitheatre was difficult
to seize. I visited another in Hiva-oa, smaller but more perfect, where
it was easy to fo