sunk in the ground; and some of these stones in the wall of the
lower are immensely large; one, which I measured, was twenty-four feet
by twelve, and two feet thick; these Futtaf[=a]ihe informed me were
brought in double canoes from the island of Lefooga. They are coral
stone, and are hewn into a tolerably good shape, both with respect to
the straightness of their sides and flatness of their surfaces. They are
now so hardened by the weather, that the great difficulty we had in
breaking a specimen of one corner made it not easy to conjecture how the
labour of hewing them at first had been effected; as, by the marks of
antiquity which some of them bear, they must have been built long before
Tasman showed the natives an iron tool. Besides the trees which grow on
the top and sides of most of them, there are the _etooa_, and a variety
of other trees about them; and these, together with the thousands of
bats which hang on their branches, all contribute to the awful solemnity
of those sepulchral mansions of the ancient chiefs. On our way back
Futtaf[=a]ihe told us that all the _fiatookas_ we had seen were built by
his ancestors, who also lay interred in them; and as there appeared no
reason to doubt the truth of this, it proves that a supreme power in the
government of the island must for many generations have been in the
family of the Futtaf[=a]ihes: for though there were many _fiatookas_ in
the island, the brethren, who had seen most of them, said they were not
to be compared to these for magnitude, either in the pile or the stones
which compose them."[152]

[151] Captain James Wilson, _Missionary Voyage to the Southern
Pacific Ocean,_ p. 252. As to Futtaf[=a]ihe, the Tooitonga or
divine chief of their time, the missionaries remark (_l.c._)
that "Futtaf[=a]ihe is very superstitious, and himself esteemed
as an _odooa_ or god." Here _odooa_ is the Polynesian word which
is usually spelled _atua_. Mariner tells us (_Tonga Islands_,
ii. 76) that the family name of the Tooitonga was Fatafehi,
which seems to be only another way of spelling Futtaf[=a]ihe,
the form adopted by the missionaries. Captain Cook similarly
gives Futtaf[=a]ihe as the family name of the sacred kings or
Tooitongas, deriving the name "from the God so called, who is
probably their tutelary patron, and perhaps their common
ancestor." See Captain James Cook, _Voyages_, v. 425.

[152] Captain James Wilson, _M