r stone platforms of the usual type,
ranging from three or four to six, eight, twelve, and even fifteen feet
in height. The blocks of stone put together to form the platforms were
sometimes enormous, many of them measuring eight feet long by four feet
thick and wide; and they were hewn and polished into such perfect form
as to excite the wonder of the European beholder, who reflected with
astonishment on the vast labour requisite to bring these huge rocks from
the sea and to chisel them into shape without the help of iron tools.
Access to the platforms was afforded by sloping trunks of trees notched
into steps. In these open sheds the men feasted and prayed. Before each
repast it was customary to offer to the deity a small portion of food
wrapt in leaves. Sometimes the priests would thrust the morsels into the
mouths of Tiki's grotesque images. No woman might enter these
banqueting-halls or mount the platforms on which they stood. The place
was strictly tabooed to them, and the taboo was signified in the usual
way by long pennants of white cloth attached to the posts of the
house.[56]

[56] Porter, _op. cit._ ii. 38 _sq._; F. D. Bennett, _op. cit._
i. 317 _sq._; Mathias G----, _op. cit._ pp. 54-56; Melville,
_Typee_ pp. 93-95. Of these writers it is Porter who gives the
dimensions of some of the blocks of stone composing the
platforms and expresses his amazement at the labour involved in
their construction. He concludes his description as follows (ii.
39): "When we count the immense numbers of such places, which
are everywhere to be met with, our astonishment is raised to the
highest, that a people in a state of nature, unassisted by any
of those artificial means, which so much assist and facilitate
the labour of the civilized man, could have conceived and
executed a work, which, to every beholder, must appear
stupendous. These piles are raised with views to magnificence
alone; there does not appear to be the slightest utility
attending them: the houses situated on them are unoccupied,
except during the period of feasting, and they appear to belong
to a public, without the whole efforts of which they could not
have been raised, and with every exertion that could possibly
have been made, years must have been requisite for the
completion of them." Of one of these structures seen by him in
the anterior of Nukahiva, Stewart observes, "The s