in, at once
convinced me that neither he nor the rest of his countrymen knew
anything about them."[113] Melville was accordingly disposed to
attribute the erection of these remarkable terraces to an extinct and
forgotten race.[114] The hypothesis is all the more probable because the
monument appears to have been entirely abandoned and unused by the
natives during the time when they have been known to Europeans. But it
is doubtful whether the edifice was a pyramid; all that Melville's
somewhat vague description implies is that it consisted of a series of
terraces built one above the other on the hillside.

[113] Melville, _Typee_, pp. 166 _sq._

[114] Melville, _Typee_, p. 167.

According to some accounts the remains of the dead, instead of being
deposited in sheds or huts erected on stone platforms, were buried in
the platforms themselves. Thus, according to William Crook, the first
missionary to the Marquesans, "they have a _morai_ in each district,
where the dead are buried beneath a pavement of large stones."[115]
Similarly, in Nukahiva two or three large quadrangular platforms
(_pi-pis_), heavily flagged, enclosed with regular stone walls and
almost hidden by the interlacing branches of enormous trees, were
pointed out as burial-places to Melville, and he was told that the
bodies "were deposited in rude vaults beneath the flagging, and were
suffered to remain there without being disinterred. Although nothing
could be more strange and gloomy than the aspect of these places, where
the lofty trees threw their dark shadows over rude blocks of stone, a
stranger looking at them would have discerned none of the ordinary
evidences of a place of sepulture."[116] To the same effect, perhaps,
Porter observes that, "when the flesh is mouldered from the bones, they
are, as I have been informed, carefully cleansed: some are kept for
relics, and some are deposited in the _morais_."[117] Again, Krusenstern
says that twelve months after the death "the corpse is broken into
pieces, and the bones are packed in a small box made of the wood of the
bread-fruit tree, and carried to the _morai_ or burial place, where no
woman is allowed to approach under pain of death."[118] However, these
statements do not necessarily imply that the bones were buried under the
stones of the platform at the _morai_.

[115] Quoted by J. Wilson, _Missionary Voyage to the Southern
Pacific Ocean_, p. 144.

[116] Melville, _Typee_, p.