University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXI.

Almost every country has its medicinal springs famed for their
healing virtues. The Cheltenham of Typee is embosomed in
the deepest solitude, and but seldom receives a visitor. It is
situated remote from any dwelling, a little way up the mountain,
near the head of the valley; and you approach it by a pathway
shaded by the most beautiful foliage and adorned with a thousand
fragrant plants.

The mineral waters of Arva Wai[2] ooze forth from the crevices
of a rock, and gliding down its mossy side, fall at last, in many
clustering drops, into a natural basin of stone fringed round
with grass and dewy-looking little violet-coloured flowers, as
fresh and beautiful as the perpetual moisture they enjoy can
make them.

The water is held in high estimation by the islanders, some of
whom consider it an agreeable as well as a medicinal beverage;
they bring it from the mountain in their calabashes, and store it
away beneath heaps of leaves in some shady nook near the house.
Old Marheyo had a great love for the waters of the spring.
Every now and then he lugged off to the mountain a great
round demijohn of a calabash, and, panting with his exertions,
brought it back filled with his darling fluid.

The water tasted like a solution of a dozen disagreeable things,
and was sufficiently nauseous to have made the fortune of the
proprietor, had the spa been situated in the midst of any civilized
community.

As I am no chemist, I cannot give a scientific analysis of the
water. All I know about the matter is, that one day Marheyo

in my presence poured out the last drop from his huge calabash,
and I observed at the bottom of the vessel a small quantity of
gravelly sediment very much resembling our common sand.
Whether this is always found in the water, and gives it its peculiar
flavour and virtues, or whether its presence was merely
incidental, I was not able to ascertain.

One day in returning from this spring by a circuitous path, I
came upon a scene which reminded me of Stonehenge and the
architectural labours of the Druid.

At the base of one of the mountains, and surrounded on all
sides by dense groves, a series of vast terraces of stone rises, step
by step, for a considerable distance up the hill side. These
terraces cannot be less than one hundred yards in length and
twenty in width. Their magnitude, however, is less striking
than the immense size of the blocks composing them. Some of
the stones, of an oblong shape, are from ten to fifteen feet in
length, and five or six feet thick. Their sides are quite smooth,
but though square, and of pretty regular formation, they bear
no mark of the chisel. They are laid together without cement,
and here and there show gaps between. The topmost terrace
and the lower one are somewhat peculiar in their construction.
They have both a quadrangular depression in the centre, leaving
the rest of the terrace elevated several feet above it. In the
intervals of the stones immense trees have taken root, and their
broad boughs stretching far over, and interlacing together,
support a canopy almost impenetrable to the sun. Overgrowing
the greater part of them, and climbing from one to another, is
a wilderness of vines, in whose sinewy embrace many of the
stones lie half hidden, while in some places a thick growth of
bushes entirely covers them. There is a wild pathway which
obliquely crosses two of these terraces; and so profound is the
shade, so dense the vegetation, that a stranger to the place might
pass along it without being aware of their existence.

These structures bear every indication of a very high antiquity,
and Kory-Kory, who was my authority in all matters of
scientific research, gave me to understand that they were coeval
with the creation of the world; that the great gods themselves
were the builders; and that they would endure until time shall
be no more. Kory-Kory's prompt explanation, and his attributing

the work to a divine origin, at once convinced me that neither
he nor the rest of his countrymen knew anything about them.

As I gazed upon this monument, doubtless the work of an extinct
and forgotten race, thus buried in the green nook of an
island at the ends of the earth, the existence of which was yesterday
unknown, a stronger feeling of awe came over me than if I
had stood musing at the mighty base of the Pyramid of Cheops.
There are no inscriptions, no sculpture, no clue, by which to
conjecture its history: nothing but the dumb stones. How
many generations of those majestic trees which overshadow them
have grown and flourished and decayed since first they were
erected!

These remains naturally suggest many interesting reflections.
They establish the great age of the island, an opinion which the
builders of theories concerning the creation of the various groups
in the South Seas are not always inclined to admit. For my own
part, I think it just as probable that human beings were living
in the valleys of the Marquesas three thousand years ago as that
they were inhabiting the land of Egypt. The origin of the island
of Nukuheva cannot be imputed to the coral insect; for indefatigable
as that wonderful creature is, it would be hardly muscular
enough to pile rocks one upon the other more than three
thousand feet above the level of the sea. That the land may
have been thrown up by a submarine volcano is as possible as
anything else. No one can make an affidavit to the contrary,
and therefore I will say nothing against the supposition: indeed,
were geologists to assert that the whole continent of America
had in like manner been formed by the simultaneous explosion
of a train of Etnas laid under the water all the way from the
North Pole to the parallel of Cape Horn, I am the last man in
the world to contradict them.

I have already mentioned that the dwellings of the islanders
were almost invariably built upon massive stone foundations,
which they call pi-pis. The dimensions of these, however, as
well as of the stones composing them, are comparatively small:
but there are other and larger erections of a similar description
comprising the "morais," or burying-grounds, and festival-places,
in nearly all the valleys of the island. Some of these
piles are so extensive, and so great a degree of labour and skill

must have been requisite in constructing them, that I can scarcely
believe they were built by the ancestors of the present inhabitants.
If indeed they were, the race has sadly deteriorated in their knowledge
of the mechanic arts. To say nothing of their habitual
indolence, by what contrivance within the reach of so simple a
people could such enormous masses have been moved or fixed in
their places? and how could they with their rude implements
have chiselled and hammered them into shape?

All of these larger pi-pis—like that of the Hoolah Hoolah
ground in the Typee valley—bore incontestable marks of great
age; and I am disposed to believe that their erection may be ascribed
to the same race of men who were the builders of the still
more ancient remains I have just described.

According to Kory-Kory's account, the pi-pi upon which
stands the Hoolah Hoolah ground was built a great many moons
ago, under the direction of Monoo, a great chief and warrior,
and, as it would appear, master-mason among the Typees. It
was erected for the express purpose to which it is at present devoted,
in the incredibly short period of one sun; and was dedicated
to the immortal wooden idols by a grand festival, which
lasted ten days and nights.

Among the smaller pi-pis, upon which stand the dwelling-houses
of the natives, I never observed any which intimated a
recent erection. There are in every part of the valley a great
many of these massive stone foundations which have no houses
upon them. This is vastly convenient, for whenever an enterprising
islander chooses to emigrate a few hundred yards from
the place where he was born, all he has to do in order to establish
himself in some new locality, is to select one of the many
unappropriated pi-pis, and without further ceremony pitch his
bamboo tent upon it.