The Cap, Together With The Head, Made
One Half Of The Whole Pillar Which Appeared Above Ground.
We did not
observe that the natives paid any worship to these pillars, yet they
seemed to hold them in some kind of veneration, as they sometimes
expressed a dislike when we walked over the paved area or pedestals,
or examined the stones of which it consisted.
A few of the natives
accompanied us farther on into the country, where we had seen some
bushes at a distance, which we hoped would afford us something new.
Our road was intolerably rugged, over heaps of volcanic stones, which
rolled away under our feet, and against which we continually hurt
ourselves. The natives who were accustomed to this desolate ground,
skipped nimbly from stone to stone without the least difficulty. In
our way we saw several black rats running about, which it seems are
common to every island in the South Sea. Being arrived at the
shrubbery which we had in view, we found it was nothing but a small
plantation of the paper mulberry, of which here, as well as at
Otaheite, they make their cloth. Its stems were from two to four feet
high, and planted in rows, among very large rocks, where the rains had
washed a little soil together. In the neighbourhood of these we saw
some bushes of the hibiscus populneus, Linn, which is common also in
the Society Isles, where it is one of the numerous plants made use of
to dye yellow; and likewise a mimosa, which is the only shrub that
affords the natives sticks for their clubs and patoo-patoos, and wood
sufficient to patch up a canoe.
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