y with the leaves of the
fan-palm. The posterior, or tallest wall, was twelve feet high, the
anterior was low, closed by a mat, and decorated with six wooden
pillars, covered with stained cinnet and white cloth. Strips of tapa
[bark-cloth], fixed to a wand, fluttered on the roof, to denote that the
spot was tabooed; and for the same purpose, a row of globular stones,
each the size of a football, and whitened with coral lime, occupied the
top of a low but broad stone wall which encircled the building. The
interior contained nothing but the bier on which the corpse was
laid."[111] From the sketch which Bennett gives of this particular
mausoleum, as he calls it, we gather that the sepulchral hut containing
the body was not raised on a stone platform, but built on the flat.

[106] Vincendon-Dumoulin et C. Desgraz, _op. cit._ p. 253.

[107] Radiguet, _op. cit._ p. 92. One of these stones was said
to have been erected by the French navigator, Captain Marchand,
and to have formerly borne an inscription recording his taking
possession of the island. Hence it would be unsafe to draw any
conclusion from the supposed antiquity of these two tall upright
stones.

[108] C. S. Stewart, _op. cit._ i. 260.

[109] F. D. Bennett, _op. cit._ i. 329.

[110] Compare J. Dumont d'Urville, _Voyage au Pole Sud, Histoire
du Voyage_, iv. 33, "Sous un hangar se trouvent quelques
supports formant, a 2 metres au-dessus du sol, une estrade sur
laquelle est depose le _toui-papao_. C'est le nom que les
naturels donnent au cadavre enveloppe d'herbes et de _tapa_
(etoffes de papyrus faites dans le pays). On n'apercoit du corps
ainsi habille que les extremites des doigts des pieds et des
mains."

[111] F. D. Bennett, _op. cit._ i. 331.

There seems to be no evidence that the stone platforms on which the
sepulchral sheds or huts of the Marquesans were erected ever took the
shape of stepped or terraced pyramids like the massive stone pyramids of
Tahiti and Tonga. So far as the mortuary platforms of the Marquesans are
described, they appear to have been quadrangular piles of stone, with
upright sides, not stepped or terraced. Megalithic monuments in the form
of stepped or terraced pyramids seem to have been very rare in the
Marquesas Islands; indeed, it is doubtful whether they existed at all.
With regard to the island of Tahuata (Santa Christina), it is positively
affirmed by Be