een. From the canoe he bore them on his back to the spot where they
now stand.[181] This story can hardly be thought to throw much light on
the origin of the monument; for the natives are in the habit of
referring the marvels which they do not understand to the action of the
god or hero Maui, just as the ancient Greeks fathered many natural
wonders on the deified hero Hercules.[182] But from Mateialona, Governor
of Haapai and cousin of the King of Tonga, Sir Basil Thomson obtained a
tradition of the origin of the stones which is at least free from the
miraculous element and connects the monument with Tongan history. The
account runs thus: "Concerning the Haamonga of Maui, they say forsooth
that a Tui Tonga (the sacred line of chiefs), named Tui-ta-tui,
erected it, and that he was so named because it was a time of
assassination.[183] And they say that he had it built for him to sit
upon during the Faikava (ceremony of brewing kava), when the people sat
round him in a circle, and that the king so dreaded assassination that
he had this lordly seat built for himself that he might sit out of the
reach of his people. And this, they say, is the origin of the present
custom of the Faikava, it being now forbidden for any one to sit behind
the king." At such wassails the presiding chief sits at the apex of an
oval. To this tradition Sir Basil Thomson adds: "Mr. Shirley Baker told
me that he believed the Haamonga to have been erected as a _fakamanatu_
(memorial) to the son of some Tui Tonga, a view that finds support in
the fondness of Tongan chiefs for originality in the burial ceremonies
of their near relations--witness Mariner's account of the funeral of
Finau's daughter--but on the other hand native traditions generally
have a kernel of truth, and the legend of Tui-ta-tui and its
consequences finds an analogy in our own custom of guarding against an
assassin's dagger at the drinking of the loving cup."[184] The tradition
receives some confirmation from the bowl-like hollow on the upper
surface of the cross-stone; for the hollow might have served as the
king's drinking-cup to hold his kava at the customary wassails. Indeed,
Mr. Philip Hervey, the first to examine the monument, describes the
hollow in question as "a small cava bowl";[185] and after giving an
account of the monument Mr. Brenchley adds: "Its history seems to be
entirely unknown, but it is very natural to suppose from its form that
it was connected with some ancient