ough she made no scruple to do so before him,
and received from him the customary obeisance, by touching her
foot." See Captain James Cook, _Voyages_, v. 430 _sq._

"Some of these edifices were of an oval form, but they were much
smaller. Each of them was surmounted by a small hut, which served as an
oratory or house for the spirit of the dead; most of them have been
destroyed by the lapse of time, and only traces of them are left
scattered on the ground.

"The enormous blocks of coral employed in the construction of these
monuments have all been brought by sea from Hifo to Mooa. They were got
on the shore of the sea at Hifo, were hewn on the spot, and were
transported in great canoes; then they were landed at Mooa and drawn on
rollers to the place of their destination. These monuments are
astonishing evidence of the patience which they must have demanded on
the part of these islanders; they were ocular testimony to me of the
high degree of civilisation which the natives had reached. Man must have
risen to ideas of a much higher order than those of a simple savage
before he would take so great pains for the single object of
consecrating the memory of his chiefs.

"Such tombs are no longer built in Tongataboo: people content themselves
with simple mounds surrounded by a row of posts or even an ordinary
palisade. However, Singleton assured me that Finow the Younger had
erected two great _fai-tokas_ of stone in Vavao, one for the last
Tooitonga, and one for his father."[154]

[154] J. Dumont d'Urville, _Voyage de l'Astrolabe, Histoire du
Voyage_, iv. (Paris, 1832) pp. 106-108. Singleton was an
Englishman, one of the crew of the _Port-au-Prince_, the ship in
which Mariner sailed. When Dumont d'Urville visited Tonga,
Singleton had lived as a native among the natives for
twenty-three years; he was married and had children, and he
hoped to end his days in Tongataboo. See J. Dumont d'Urville,
_op. cit._ iv. 23 _sq._

The Frenchman, De Sainson, who accompanied Dumont d'Urville on his visit
to Tongataboo, has also described the tombs of the Tooitongas at Mooa
from personal observation. I will quote his description: "It is in the
heart of the forest that the ancient inhabitants of these countries, who
idolized their Kings (Tooi-tongas), placed the tombs of that sacred
race. These monuments of a more enterprising age still astonish the
beholder by their mass and their extent. The _fai-t