That night the native passengers, rolled up in Tapa, their heads resting on hollow wooden pillows, camped on deck; the scent of the coconut oil with which they anointed their sleek smooth bodies was quite overpowering, especially when blended with the fragrance of the cissies (or flower girdles) worn around their waists, and with that of the garlands of flowers and berries hung so lavishly about their necks.
A tropic night, and the moon at the full! The pure white radiance threw everything into strong relief. The natives slept at intervals and danced at intervals, crooning a strange weird chant to the accompaniment of much beating of hands.
By daylight next morning we anchored in the roadstead of Lefuka, the principal island in the Haapai group. A long low shore, a foreground of white sand, a fringe of coconut palms with thicker vegetation beyond, brown thatched roofs of native houses, and white ones of Europeans! Such was Pangai town as seen from the deck of our steamer. Seaward, on the other hand, there was the already familiar line of coral reef and a score of "Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea."
[Illustration: HAAMUNGA OR TRILITHON IN TONGA
The whole of our passengers, just six in number, landed for a tour of inspection. In front of nearly every native house, a horse was hobbled, but in spite of the abundance of green pasturage the unfortunate animals looked half starved, and their thin legs were so weak that I wondered how they could do any work at all. On quitting the town, however, we left the houses behind, and strolled away into the bush, where we again had only the green turf under our feet, and again saw round us an absolutely level country. Meanwhile, huge fronds of coconut palms did their best to shield us from the sun, and the broad leaves of the banana cast cool shadows across our path. Before we had gone far, the most wonderful lean, lank, long-legged, reddish-brown pigs went scudding across our track, and disappeared amongst the trees. They were the direct descendants, I was told, of the pigs left here by Captain Cook. It did not take us more than an hour to walk right across Lefuka, until we reached its eastern shore. The tide was dead low, and we could see the outlines of the dry coral reefs, which connect all these islands as with a chain. On the way, one of our party related how, not so long ago, the coast was bodily raised twenty feet higher by an earthquake, and how the earthquake was followed by a great tidal wave. A halt was called, and while we rested on the coral beach and ate our fill of "mummy" apples[3]--one of our company amused us with the account of a wonderful Haamunga or Trilithon in Tonga, which, alas, we had no chance of visiting. This Trilithon, which is about sixteen miles inland from Tongatabu, seems to afford evidence of the former existence, in Tonga, of an ancient civilisation, that of some bygone people who, in common with the Maories, were possessed of religious instincts far in advance of the conquering Polynesians, who succeeded them. It consists of two enormous upright blocks of stone with a massive slab on the top, the latter being curiously countersunk into the two uprights. The whole structure is strongly reminiscent of our cromlechs at Stonehenge and elsewhere, recalling the theory of a universal sun worship. We talked this subject out as we sat, under the shade of the palms, on the sun-warmed beach, then we returned to the landing stage by another route.