_, which generally
distinguish the places where these people bury the bones of their dead:
Their name for such burying-grounds, which are also places of worship,
is _Morai_.[93] We were soon struck with the sight of an enormous pile,
which, we were told, was the Morai of Oamo and Oberea, and the principal
piece of Indian architecture in the island. It was a pile of stone-work,
raised pyramidically, upon an oblong base, or square, two hundred and
sixty-seven feet long, and eighty-seven wide. It was built like the
small pyramidal mounts upon which we sometimes fix the pillar of a
sun-dial, where each side is a flight of steps; the steps, however, at
the sides, were broader than those at the ends, so that it terminated
not in a square of the same figure with the base, but in a ridge, like
the roof of a house: There were eleven of these steps, each of which was
four feet high, so that the height of the pile was forty-four feet; each
step was formed of one course of white coral-stone, which was neatly
squared and polished; the rest of the mass, for there was no hollow
within, consisted of round pebbles, which, from the regularity of their
figure, seemed to have been wrought. Some of the coral-stones were very
large; we measured one of them, and found it three feet and a half by
two feet and a half. The foundation was of rock stones, which were also
squared; and one of them measured four feet seven inches by two feet
four. Such a structure, raised without the assistance of iron-tools to
shape the stones, or mortar to join them, struck us with astonishment:
It seemed to be as compact and firm as it could have been made by any
workman in Europe, except that the steps, which range along its greatest
length, are not perfectly straight, but sink in a kind of hollow in the
middle, so that the whole surface, from end to end, is not a right line,
but a curve. The quarry stones, as we saw no quarry in the
neighbourhood, must have been brought from a considerable distance; and
there is no method of conveyance here but by hand: The coral must also
have been fished from under the water, where, though it may be found in
plenty, it lies at a considerable depth, never less than three feet.
Both the rock-stone and the coral could be squared only by tools made of
the same substance, which must have been a work of incredible labour;
but the polishing was more easily effected by means of the sharp coral
sand, which is found every-where upon the s