or burying-ground,
as Captain Cook calls it, were planted trees of various kinds. Similar
sanctuaries appeared to Captain Cook to abound in the island; the
particular one described by him he believed to be among the least
considerable, being far less conspicuous than several others which he
had seen in sailing along the coast.[96]

[96] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vi. 183-187. The cloth-covered pyramid
or obelisk was called a _henananoo_ (_ib._ p. 187).

From his description we may infer that the temples (_morais_) observed
by him did not contain stone pyramids like those which formed such
prominent features in the Tahitian sanctuaries and in the burial grounds
of the Tooitongas in Tongataboo; for the pyramids, or rather obelisks,
of wicker-work seen by Captain Cook in the Hawaiian sanctuaries were
obviously structures of a wholly different kind. But there seem to be
some grounds for thinking that stone pyramids, built in steps or
terraces, did occur in some of the Hawaiian temples. Thus Captain King
saw a _morai_, as he calls it, which consisted of a square solid pile of
stones about forty yards long, twenty broad, and fourteen [feet?] in
height. The top was flat and well paved, and surrounded by a wooden
rail, on which were fixed the skulls of captives who had been sacrificed
on the death of chiefs. The ascent to the top of the pile was easy, but
whether it was a staircase or an inclined plane is not mentioned by
Captain King. At one end of the temple or sacred enclosure was an
irregular kind of scaffold supported on poles more than twenty feet
high, at the foot of which were twelve images ranged in a semicircle
with a sacrificial table or altar in front of them. On the scaffold
Captain Cook was made to stand, and there, swathed in red cloth, he
received the adoration of the natives, who offered him a hog and chanted
a long litany in his honour.[97]

[97] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vii. 5-7.

When Kamehameha was busy conquering the archipelago in the last years of
the eighteenth century, he built a great temple (_heiau_) for his
war-god Tairi in the island of Hawaii. Some thirty years later the
ruined temple was visited and described by the missionary William Ellis.
He says: "Its shape is an irregular parallelogram, 224 feet long, and
100 wide. The walls, though built of loose stones, were solid and
compact. At both ends, and on the side next the mountains, they were
twenty feet high, twelve feet thick at the bottom,