e mourners brought white and black pebbles to the house
which stood over the grave of King Finow, and how they "strewed the
inside of the house with the white ones, and also the outside about the
_fytoca_, as a decoration to it: the black pebbles they strewed only
upon those white ones, which covered the ground directly over the body,
to about the length and breadth of a man, in the form of a very
eccentric ellipse. After this, the house over the _fytoca_," continues
Mariner, "was closed up at both ends with a reed fencing, reaching from
the eaves to the ground, and, at the front and back, with a sort of
basket-work, made of the young branches of the cocoa-nut tree, split and
interwoven in a very curious and ornamental way, to remain till the next
burial, when they are to be taken down, and, after the conclusion of the
ceremony, new ones are to be put up in like manner."[138] This
description of the house over King Finow's grave agrees so closely with
Captain Cook's description of the house in the _afiatouca_, that we may
with much probability regard the latter as a tomb, and suppose that the
"oblong square of blue pebbles," which Cook regarded as an altar and on
which he laid down his offering, marked the place of the body in the
grave: it was at once an altar and a tombstone.

[137] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, i. 144, note *. However, in
another passage (i. 392, note *) Mariner tells us that, strictly
speaking, the word _fytoca_ applied only to the mound with the
grave in it, and not to the house upon the mound; for there were
several _fytocas_ that had no houses on them. For other mentions
of _fytocas_ and notices of them by Mariner, see _op. cit._ i.
pp. 386, note *, 387, 388, 392, 393, 394, 395, 402, ii. 214-218.

[138] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, i. 402. A little farther on
(p. 424, note *) Mariner remarks that "mourners were accustomed
to smooth the graves of their departed friends, and cover them
with black and white pebbles."

On his second and more prolonged visit to the Tonga islands, Captain
Cook expressed, with more confidence, his opinion that the _fiatookas_,
as he calls them, were at once burial-grounds and places of worship.
Thus he says: "Their _morais_ or _fiatookas_ (for they are called by
both names, but mostly by the latter), are, as at Otaheite, and many
other parts of the world, burying-grounds and places of worship; though
some of them seemed to be