ed with
accumulated soil, grass, and shrubbery. Conway and myself, in descending
the hill, had our attention attracted by a direct line of shrubbery
running from the summit to the base of the hill, on the western side, to
the cocoanut grove below. Upon examination, we found it to be the
remains of a stairway, evidently of hewn stone, that had led from the
foot of the hill to the first terrace, a height of nearly 300 feet.
Within this stairway, near the base, we found a cocoanut-tree growing,
more than 200 years old, the roots pressing out the rocks. The site for
a temple is grand and imposing, and the view extensive, sweeping the
ocean, the mountains, and the great lava plain of Puna. It was also
excellent in a military point of view as a lookout. From the summit it
appeared as an ancient green island, around which had surged and rolled
a sea of lava; and so it evidently has been.

"By whom and when was this hill terraced and these stones hewn? There is
a mystery hanging around this hill which exists nowhere else in the
Sandwich Islands. The other structures so numerously scattered over the
group are made of rough stone; there is no attempt at a terrace; there
is no flight of steps leading to them; there is no hewn or polished
stone, nor is there any evidence of the same architectural skill
evinced. They are the oldest ruins yet discovered, and were evidently
erected by a people considerably advanced in arts, acquainted with the
use of metallic instruments, the cardinal points, and some mathematical
knowledge. Were they the ancestors of the present Hawaiians, or of a
different race that has passed away?"

He inquired of the oldest natives concerning the history of this ruin,
but "they could give only vague and confused traditions in regard to it,
and these were contradictory. The only point on which they agreed was
that it had never been used within the memory of man." They also said
there was another old structure of the same kind in Kona, whose history
is lost. The language of the Sandwich Islands is so manifestly a dialect
of the Malayan tongue, that the influence of the Malays must have been
paramount in these islands in ancient times.

D.

DECIPHERING THE INSCRIPTIONS.

In the "Actes de la Societe Philologique," Paris, for March, 1870, Mons.
H. de Charencey gives some particulars of his attempt to decipher
"fragments" of one or two very brief inscriptions on the bas-relief of
the cross at Palenque. I know n