the different pyramids; one step was found
to be four feet high. The breadth of each step is three feet or more: it
has been carefully levelled and covered with coral gravel. The stones
fit very closely and are very regular at top and bottom throughout the
tiers. The corners of one pyramid observed by the writers are formed of
huge rectangular stones, which seem to have been put in position before
they were finally faced. On the upper surface of the largest stone is a
deep hollow about the size and shape of a large chestnut mortar. Sir
Basil Thomson, who has examined this hollow, believes it to be a natural
cavity which has been artificially smoothed by a workman. He suggests
that it may have been lined with leaves and used as a bowl for brewing
kava at the funeral ceremonies. On one mound the writers of the
pamphlet remarked a large flat stone, some five and a half feet square;
and in several of the tombs they noticed huge slabs of volcanic stone
placed indiscriminately side by side with blocks of coral. The writers
measured the bases of three of the tombs and found them to be about two
chains (one hundred and thirty-two feet) long by a chain and a half
(ninety-nine feet) broad; the base of a fourth was even larger.[160]

[159] (Sir) Basil Thomson, _Diversions of a Prime Minister_, pp.
379 _sq._; _id._ "Notes upon the Antiquities of Tonga," _Journal
of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxii. (1902) pp. 86-88.

[160] (Sir) Basil Thomson, "Notes upon the Antiquities of
Tonga," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxii.
(1902) pp. 87 _sq._

Surveying these various accounts of the tombs of the Tooitongas or
sacred chiefs, we may perhaps conclude that, while the type of tomb
varied in different cases, the most characteristic, and certainly the
most remarkable, type was that of a stepped or terraced pyramid built of
such large blocks of stone as to merit the name of megalithic monuments.
So far as I have observed in the accounts given of them, this type of
tomb was reserved exclusively for the sacred chiefs, the Tooitongas,
whom the Tongans regarded as divine and as direct descendants of the
gods. The civil kings, so far as appears, were not buried in these
massive pyramids, but merely in stone vaults sunk in the summits of
grassy mounds.

It is natural, with Sir Basil Thomson,[161] to compare the pyramids of
the Tooitongas with the similar structures called _morais_ or _marais_
which are