wind. Only the stones of the terrace endure; nor can any ruin,
cairn, or standing stone, or vitrified fort present a more stern
appearance of antiquity. We must have passed from six to eight of
these now houseless platforms. On the main road of the island,
where it crosses the valley of Taipi, Mr. Osbourne tells me they
are to be reckoned by the dozen; and as the roads have been made
long posterior to their erection, perhaps to their desertion, and
must simply be regarded as lines drawn at random through the bush,
the forest on either hand must be equally filled with these
survivals: the gravestones of whole families. Such ruins are tapu
in the strictest sense; no native must approach them; they have
become outposts of the kingdom of the grave. It might appear a
natural and pious custom in the hundreds who are left, the
rearguard of perished thousands, that their feet should leave
untrod these hearthstones of their fathers. I believe, in fact,
the custom rests on different and more grim conceptions. But the
house, the grave, and even the body of the dead, have been always
particularly honoured by Marquesans. Until recently the corpse was
sometimes kept in the family and daily oiled and sunned, until, by
gradual and revolting stages, it dried into a kind of mummy.
Offerings are still laid upon the grave. In Traitor's Bay, Mr.
Osbourne saw a man buy a looking-glass to lay upon his son's. And
the sentiment against the desecration of tombs, thoughtlessly
ruffled in the laying down of the new roads, is a chief ingredient
in the native hatred for the French.

The Marquesan beholds with dismay the approaching extinction of his
race. The thought of death sits down with him to meat, and rises
with him from his bed; he lives and breathes under a shadow of
mortality awful to support; and he is so inured to the apprehension