A few miles from the Wood of Bats, in the midst of exquisite scenery, stands a famous avava known as Captain Cook’s Tree. It was under this tree that the great explorer called together all the natives, on his discovery of the islands in 1777, and addressed them by means of an interpreter. The account of this will be found in “Cook’s Voyages.” The tree is still in splendid condition, in spite of its age, which must amount to many hundred years. Pigs were brought to Tonga by Cook in this same year, and a few of the original breed are still to be seen in the island--tall, gaunt, hump-backed creatures with immense heads and long noses, contrasting oddly with the smaller and fatter kinds introduced by later voyagers.
The burial-place of the Tui Tongans made an object for another drive. Before the introduction of Christianity, in early Victorian days, the Tongans had two kings, an ordinary earthly king, who did all the hard work of governing, and a heavenly king, the Tui Tonga, who was supposed to be of divine descent, and was worshipped as a god. For many centuries, the Tui Tongas were buried in great oblong raised enclosures, three-terraced, and built of rough-hewn, closely fitted slabs from the coral reef. Two of these great tombs still remain, hidden in tangled thickets of low bush, and considerably worn by age. I had no means of measurement, but judged the larger one to be about fifty yards by thirty, the smaller somewhat less. The state of the coral slabs, and the great trees that have grown up rooted among them, suggest that the tombs are extremely old. Tradition among the natives takes them back beyond the recollection of any of their ancestors; they cannot say when or why they were built. The construction--a double terrace, each step about five feet high--and the carefully arranged oblong shape, seem to point to some special significance long since forgotten. There is also a “trilithon” erection of three large blocks of stone, some miles away, concerning which island traditions are silent. It could not have been constructed by hand labour alone; some mechanical device must have been employed to raise the centre stone to its present position. The ancient Tongans, however, knew nothing of mechanics, and an interesting problem is therefore set for antiquarians to solve. The height of the side supports is about twenty feet, and the centre cross-piece, which rests in a socket on each side, is a little less in length.