obliquely crosses two of
these terraces; and so profound is the shade, so dense the vegetation,
that a stranger to the place might pass along it without being aware of
their existence.

These structures bear every indication of a very high antiquity and
Kory-Kory, who was my authority in all matters of scientific research,
gave me to understand that they were coeval with the creation of the
world; that the great gods themselves were the builders; and that they
would endure until time shall be no more.

Kory-Kory's prompt explanation and his attributing the work to a
divine origin, at once convinced me that neither he nor the rest of his
country-men knew anything about them.

As I gazed upon this monument, doubtless the work of an extinct and
forgotten race, thus buried in the green nook of an island at the ends
of the earth, the existence of which was yesterday unknown, a stronger
feeling of awe came over me than if I had stood musing at the mighty
base of the Pyramid of Cheops. There are no inscriptions, no sculpture,
no clue, by which to conjecture its history; nothing but the dumb
stones. How many generations of the majestic trees which overshadow them
have grown and flourished and decayed since first they were erected!

These remains naturally suggest many interesting reflections. They
establish the great age of the island, an opinion which the builders
of theories concerning, the creation of the various groups in the South
Seas are not always inclined to admit. For my own part, I think it
just as probable that human beings were living in the valleys of the
Marquesas three thousand years ago as that they were inhabiting the land
of Egypt. The origin of the island of Nukuheva cannot be imputed to the
coral insect; for indefatigable as that wonderful creature is, it would
be hardly muscular enough to pile rocks one upon the other more than
three thousand feet above the level of the sea. That the land may have
been thrown up by a submarine volcano is as possible as anything else.
No one can make an affidavit to the contrary, and therefore I still say
nothing against the supposition: indeed, were geologists to assert that
the whole continent of America had in like manner been formed by the
simultaneous explosion of a train of Etnas laid under the water all the
way from the North Pole to the parallel of Cape Horn, I am the last man
in the world to contradict them.

I have already mentioned that the dwellings of the