smaller stones; and at
one end of it stood the pyramid or obelisk, measuring about four feet
square at the base and about twenty feet high. The four sides were
composed, not of stones, but of small poles interwoven with twigs and
branches, thus forming an indifferent wicker-work, hollow or open within
from bottom to top. It seemed to be in a rather ruinous state, but
enough remained to show that it had been originally covered with the
light grey cloth to which the natives attached a religious significance.
It was no doubt with similar cloth that the white pyramids or obelisks
were covered which Captain Cook beheld in the distance from the deck of
his ship. Beside the particular pyramid which he examined Captain Cook
found a sacrificial stage or altar with plantains laid upon it. The
pyramids or obelisks which he thus saw and described were presumably the
structures in which the priests concealed themselves when they gave
oracles in the name of the god. On the farther side of the area of the
_morai_ of which Captain Cook has given us a description stood a house
or shed about ten feet high, forty feet long, and ten broad in the
middle, but tapering somewhat towards the ends. The entrance into it was
at the middle of the side, which was in the _morai_. On the farther side
of the house, opposite the entrance, stood two wooden images, each cut
out of a single piece, with pedestals, in all about three feet high, not
badly designed nor executed. They were said to represent goddesses
(_eatooa no veheina_). On the head of one of them was a carved helmet,
and on the other a cylindrical cap like the head-dress worn at Tahiti.
In the middle of the house, and before the two images, was an oblong
space, enclosed by a low edging of stone and covered with shreds of the
same grey cloth which draped the pyramid or obelisk. Within this
enclosure seven chiefs lay buried; and outside the house, just on one
side of the entrance, were two small square spaces in which a man and a
hog were buried respectively, after being killed and sacrificed to the
divinity. At a little distance from these, and near the middle of the
_morai_, were three more of these square enclosed places, in which three
chiefs had been interred. In front of their graves was an oblong
enclosed space in which, as Captain Cook was told, three human victims
were buried, each of them having been sacrificed at the funeral of one
of the three chiefs. Within the area of the _morai_