the island of Tonga-Taboo, one of the Friendly group, is a remarkable
megalith, the base of which rests on uprights thirty feet high,
and supports a colossal stone bowl which is no less than thirteen
feet in diameter by one in height. In the same island is a trilithon
consisting of a transverse bar resting on two pillars provided with
mortises for its reception. The pillars weigh sixty-five tons, and a
local tradition affirms that the coralline conglomerate out of which
they were hewn was brought from Wallis Island, more than a thousand
miles off. It is difficult to explain[41] how the makers of this
trilithon managed to transport, to work, and to place such masses
in position. In a neighboring island a circle of uplifted stones,
covering an area of several hundred yards, reminds us of the cromlechs
of Brittany. The so-called Burial-Mound of Oberea at Otaheite, if it
really was constructed with stone tools, is yet more curious. Imagine
a pyramid of which the base is a long square, two hundred and sixty
feet long by eighty-seven wide. It is forty-three feet high. The top
is reached by a flight of steps cut in the coralline rock, all these
steps being of the same size and perfectly squared and polished.[42]


FIGURE 4

Stone statues on Easter Island.


On a rock at the entrance to the port of Sydney a kangaroo is
sculptured. In Easter Island (Rapa-Nui) La Perouse discovered a number
of coarsely executed bust statues (Fig. 4). There are altogether
some four hundred of them, forming groups in different parts of the
island. The excavations conducted by Pinart in 1887 have proved these