in the island of Upolu, are the
ruins of a temple, of which the central and side posts and the rafters
were all constructed of stone. The ground plan seems to have resembled
that of an ordinary Samoan house of the best style, forming an ellipse
which measured fifty feet in one direction by forty feet in the other.
Two central pillars appear to have supported the roof, each fashioned of
a single block of stone some thirteen feet high, twelve inches thick one
way and nine inches the other. The rafters were in lengths of twelve
feet and six feet, by four inches square. Of the outside pillars, which
upheld the lower edge of the sloping roof, eighteen were seen standing
by Pritchard, who has described the ruins. Each pillar stood three feet
high and measured nine inches thick in one way by six inches in the
other. Each had a notch or shoulder on the inner side for supporting the
roof. Pillars and rafters were quarried from an adjoining bluff, distant
only some fifty yards from the ruins. Some squared stones lying at the
foot of the bluff seem to show that the temple was never completed. The
site of the ruins is a flat about three acres in area. The natives call
the ruins _Fale-o-le-Fe'e_, that is, the House of the Fe'e. This Fe'e
was a famous war god of A'ana and Faleata, two native towns of Upolu; he
was commonly incarnated in the cuttle-fish. As the Samoans were
unacquainted with the art of cutting stones, and had no tools suitable
for the work, they thought that this temple, with its columns and
rafters of squared stone, must have been built by the gods, and they
explained its unfinished state by alleging that the divine builders had
quarrelled among themselves before they had brought the work to
completion.[133]

[133] W. T. Pritchard, _Polynesian Reminiscences_, pp.
119-121; Violette, "Notes d'un Missionnaire sur l'archipel de
Samoa," _Les Missions Catholiques_, iii. (1870) p. 112; G.
Turner, _Samoa_, p. 31; J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, p. 228; G.
Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, p. 220.

For the sake of completeness I will mention another stone monument, of
more imposing dimensions, which has been discovered in Samoa, though its
origin and meaning are unknown. It stands on a tableland in the high
mountainous interior of Upolu and appears to be not altogether easy of
access. The discoverer, Mr. H. B. Sterndale, reached it by clambering up
from what he describes as a broad and dangerous ravine. In