found in Tahiti and the Marquesas islands. Indeed, the very
name _morai_ was sometimes applied to them by the Tongans themselves,
though more usually they called them _fiatookas_, which was simply the
common word for burying-ground.[162] In Tahiti and the Marquesas islands
these _marais_ were in like manner truncated pyramids, rising in a
series of steps or tiers, built of stones, some of which were large, but
apparently not so large as in the corresponding Tongan edifices; for in
describing one of the largest of the Tahitian _morais_ or _marais_ Cook
mentions only one stone measuring as much as four feet seven inches in
length by two feet four in breadth, though he found several three and a
half feet long by two and a half feet broad. These dimensions can hardly
compare with the size of the blocks in the tombs of the Tooitongas, some
of which, as we have seen, measure fifteen, eighteen, and even
twenty-two or twenty-four feet in length by eight or twelve feet in
height. These Tahitian and Marquesan pyramids are commonly described as
temples, and justly so, because the gods were worshipped there and human
sacrifices were offered on them.[163] But they were also, like the
similar structures in Tonga, used in certain cases for the burial of the
dead, or at all events for the preservation of their embalmed bodies.
Captain Cook seems even to have regarded the Tahitian _morais_ primarily
as burying-grounds and only secondarily as places of worship.[164] In
the island of Huahine, one of the Society Islands, the sovereign chiefs
were buried in a _marai_, where they lay, we are told, in more than
Oriental state.[165] William Ellis, one of our best authorities on the
religion of the Tahitians, tells us that "the family, district, or royal
_maraes_ were the general depositories of the bones of the departed,
whose bodies had been embalmed, and whose skulls were sometimes
preserved in the dwelling of the survivors. The _marae_ or temple
being sacred, and the bodies being under the guardianship of the gods,
were in general considered secure when deposited there. This was not,
however, always the case; and in times of war, the victors sometimes
not only despoiled the temples of the vanquished, and bore away their
idol, but robbed the sacred enclosure of the bones of celebrated
individuals."[166] Moerenhout, another good authority on the Tahitian
religion, informs us that the _marais_ which belonged to individuals
often served as cemete