The Polynesian. [volume] (Honolulu (Oahu), Hawaii) 1840-1841, 1840-07-28

| threatened TO make war on the opposite
! parties if violence were done to any of
the Engshmen under their protection.
This had the desired effect, and the affair
was accommodated, the boat with all its
effects being delivered up to them; it was
. then transported to house and placed
among their war canoes, where it now re-
mains trophy of their barbarity. Sew
cral of the men exhausted by the suffer-
lngs they had undergone, died soon after
landing. The surgeon, Mr.. Smith, had
left the island, and one man was still con-
tent to live among them.
On the southern side of this island, and
within one mile of the harbor of MetaIc-
line, are extensive ruins, boasting perhaps,
an antiquity as great as that of the Pyra-
Imids of Egypt; being, beyond doubt,
the work of a race of men far surprising
the present generation, over whose mem
DRY many ages have rolled, and whose
history oblivion has shaded forever, whose
greatness and whose power can only now
be traced from the scattered remains of
the structures they have reared, which
of their departed glory, leaving to posteri-
ty the pleasures of speculation and con-
lecture.
The site of the buildings alluded to and
to the eastward of it, is a fiat reef some
miles in extent, covered with sand grass
and near the main with young mangroves,
over which at high water canoes can pass
from the main to several small islands sit
uatc on the outer edge of the reef These,
like the rest of the islands, are covered
with trees two are inhabited, one is the
residence of the priest, the other, that of
the Whagii; several small islands lie be-
tween the former and the main; some.
more or less sixty yards in diameter, are
surrounded with brcast-work or parapct
of hewn stone. AT ebb tide much of this
is dry and may be travcrsed on foot.
The principal building is triple quad
rangular structure that is, there are three
buildings one inside the other, occupying
an area of about one hundred yards square,
surrounded by parapet from four to five
feet high and fifteen broad the extreme
elevation of the walls may therefore be
from thirty to thirty five feet The para
pet is so over9rown with trees, shrubs and
vines, as to render it impossible, and ON
two of the sides or ends of the building
by mangrovcs; there is, however, water
enough for a canoe to pass, at all times
quite round it. The stone of which these
buildings are constructed is granite, which
is the primitive rock of the island, they
are all hewn or blocked off square those
composing the wall of the outer building
are imperfectly octangular, or more prop
erly hewn square with the corners beveled
off many being twenty and twenty five
feet long. Some even longer, and twenty
inches in diameter.
1t would be difficult to tell or even con-
lecture how the force required to trans
port, and raise these stones to their pres
ent situation, was acquired by the island
ers. Round the inside of the wall is
another parapet seven feet high, and about
ten in breadth, equally impossible as that
on the outside. The walls are thirty feet
thick at the base, and twenty above the
parapet. There is only one entrance to
the building, which is on the side opposite
to that fronting the sea. This entrance