ange, breadfruit,
mummy-apple, coco, the island chestnut, and for weeds, the pine and the
banana. Four perennial streams water and keep it green; and along the
dell, first of one, then of another, of these, the road, for a
considerable distance, descends into this fortunate valley. The song of
the waters and the familiar disarray of boulders gave us a strong sense
of home, which the exotic foliage, the daft-like growth of the pandanus,
the buttressed trunk of the banyan, the black pigs galloping in the
bush, and the architecture of the native houses dissipated ere it could
be enjoyed.

The houses on the Hatiheu side begin high up; higher yet, the more
melancholy spectacle of empty paepaes. When a native habitation is
deserted, the superstructure--pandanus thatch, wattle, unstable tropical
timber--speedily rots, and is speedily scattered by the wind. Only the
stones of the terrace endure; nor can any ruin, cairn, or standing
stone, or vitrified fort present a more stern appearance of antiquity.
We must have passed from six to eight of these now houseless platforms.
On the main road of the island, where it crosses the valley of Taipi,
Mr. Osbourne tells me they are to be reckoned by the dozen; and as the
roads have been made long posterior to their erection, perhaps to their
desertion, and must simply be regarded as lines drawn at random through
the bush, the forest on either hand must be equally filled with these
survivals: the grave-stones of whole families. Such ruins are tapu[2] in
the strictest sense; no native must approach them; they have become
outposts of the kingdom of the grave. It might appear a natural and
pious custom in the hundreds who are left, the rearguard of perished
thousands, that their feet should leave untrod these hearthstones of
their fathers. I believe, in fact, the custom rests on different and
more grim conceptions. But the house, the grave, and even the body of
the dead, have been always particularly honoured by Marquesans. Until
recently the corpse was sometimes kept in the family and daily oiled
and sunned, until, by gradual and revolting stages, it dried into a kind
of mummy. Offerings are still laid upon the grave. In Traitor's Bay, Mr.
Osbourne saw a man buy a looking-glass to lay upon his son's. And the
sentiment against the desecration of tombs, thoughtlessly ruffled in the
laying down of the new roads, is a chief ingredient in the native hatred
for the French.

The Marquesan beholds