We proceeded in the boat, and passed through the only harbour, on the south side of Opoureonu, that is fit for shipping. It is situated about five miles to the westward of the isthmus, between two small islands that lie near the shore, and about a mile distant from each other, and affords good anchorage in eleven and twelve fathom water. We were now not far from the district called PAPARRA, which belonged to our friends Oamo and Oberea, where we proposed to sleep. We went on shore about an hour before night, and found that they were both absent, having left their habitations to pay us a visit at Matavai: this, however, did not alter our purpose, we took up our quarters at the house of Oberea, which, though small, was very neat, and at this time had no inhabitant but her father, who received us with looks that bid us welcome. Having taken possession, we were willing to improve the little day-light that was left us, and therefore walked out to a point, upon which we had seen, at a distance, trees that are here called _Etoa_, which generally distinguish the places where these people bury the bones of their dead: their name for such burying-grounds, which are also places of worship, is MORAI. We were soon struck with the sight of an enormous pile, which, we were told, was the morai of Oamo and Oberea, and the principal piece of Indian architecture in the island. It was a pile of stone work, raised pyramidically, upon an oblong base, or square, two hundred and sixty-seven feet long, and eighty-seven wide. It was built like the small pyramidal mounts upon which we sometimes fix the pillar of a sun-dial, where each side is a flight of steps; the steps, however, at the sides, were broader than those at the ends, so that it terminated, not in a square of the same figure with the base but in a ridge, like the roof of a house: there were eleven of these steps, each of which was four feet high, so that the height of the pile was forty-four feet; each step was formed of one course of white coral stone, which was neatly squared and polished; the rest of the mass, for there was no hollow within, consisted of round pebbles, which, from the regularity of their figure, seemed to have been wrought. Some of the coral stones were very large; we measured one of them, and found it three feet and a half by two feet and a half. The foundation was of rock stones, which were also squared; and one of them measured four feet seven inches by two feet four. Such a structure, raised without the assistance of iron tools to shape the stones, or mortar to join them, struck us with astonishment: it seemed to be as compact and firm as it could have been made by any workman in Europe, except that the steps, which range along its greatest length, are not perfectly strait, but sink in a kind of hollow in the middle, so that the whole surface, from end to end, is not a right line, but a curve. The quarry stones, as we saw no quarry in the