eitschrift fuer
Ethnologie_, xliii. (1911) pp. 163-(for the solar
interpretation).

[200] Adolph Bastian observed that "sun-worship, which people
used to go sniffing about to discover everywhere, is found on
the contrary only in very exceptional regions or on lofty
table-lands of equatorial latitude." See his book, _Die Voelker
des Oestlichen Asien_, iv. (Jena, 1868) p. 175. Nobody,
probably, has ever been better qualified than Bastian to
pronounce an opinion on such a subject; for his knowledge of the
varieties of human thought and religion, acquired both by
reading and travel, was immense. It is only to be regretted that
through haste or negligence he too often gave out the fruits of
his learning in a form which rendered it difficult to sift and
almost impossible to digest them. Yet from his storehouse he
brought forth a treasure, of which we may say what Macaulay said
of the scholarship of Parr, that it was "too often buried in the
earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant
ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid."

Bearing in mind the numerous other stone monuments scattered widely over
the islands of the Pacific, from the Carolines to Easter Island, Dr.
Guillemard concludes that some race, with a different, if not a higher
civilisation preceded the Polynesian race in its present homes, and to
this earlier race he would apparently refer the erection of the
trilithon in Tongataboo.[201] He may be right. Yet when we consider,
first, the native tradition of the setting up of the trilithon by one of
the sacred kings of Tonga; second, the practice of the Tongans of
building megalithic tombs for these same sacred kings; and, third, the
former existence in Tonga of a professional class of masons whose
business it was to construct stone vaults for the burial of chiefs,[202]
we may hesitate to resort to the hypothesis of an unknown people in
order to explain the origin of a monument which the Tongans, as we know
them, appear to have been quite capable of building for themselves.

[201] F. H. H. Guillemard, _Australasia_, ii. 500.

[202] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, i. 266.

Sec. 11. _Rites of Burial and Mourning_

The only mode of disposing of the dead which was practised in the Tonga
islands seems to have been burial in the earth. So far as appears, the
corpse was not doubled up, but laid at full length in th