No cement was used, but the edifice is firm and compact and is capable of resisting storm and decay for centuries.  Who built this temple, and how was it built, and when, are mysteries that may never be unraveled.  Outside of these ancient walls lies a sort of coffin-shaped stone eleven feet four inches long and three feet square at the small end (it would weigh a few thousand pounds), which the high chief who held sway over this district many centuries ago brought thither on his shoulder one day to use as a lounge!  This circumstance is established by the most reliable traditions.  He used to lie down on it, in his indolent way, and keep an eye on his subjects at work for him and see that there was no “soldiering” done.  And no doubt there was not any done to speak of, because he was a man of that sort of build that incites to attention to business on the part of an employee.

He was fourteen or fifteen feet high.  When he stretched himself at full length on his lounge, his legs hung down over the end, and when he snored he woke the dead.  These facts are all attested by irrefragable tradition.

On the other side of the temple is a monstrous seven-ton rock, eleven feet long, seven feet wide and three feet thick.  It is raised a foot or a foot and a half above the ground, and rests upon half a dozen little stony pedestals.  The same old fourteen-footer brought it down from the mountain, merely for fun (he had his own notions about fun), and propped it up as we find it now and as others may find it a century hence, for it would take a score of horses to budge it from its position.  They say that fifty or sixty years ago the proud Queen Kaahumanu used to fly to this rock for safety, whenever she had been making trouble with her fierce husband, and hide under it until his wrath was appeased.  But these Kanakas will lie, and this statement is one of their ablest efforts—­for Kaahumanu was six feet high—­she was bulky—­she was built like an ox—­and she could no more have squeezed herself under that rock than she could have passed between the cylinders of a sugar mill.  What could she gain by it, even if she succeeded?  To be chased and abused by a savage husband could not be otherwise than humiliating to her high spirit, yet it could never make her feel so flat as an hour’s repose under that rock would.

We walked a mile over a raised macadamized road of uniform width; a road paved with flat stones and exhibiting in its every detail a considerable degree of engineering skill.  Some say that that wise old pagan, Kamehameha I planned and built it, but others say it was built so long before his time that the knowledge of who constructed it has passed out of the traditions.  In either case, however, as the handiwork of an untaught and degraded race it is a thing of pleasing interest.  The stones are worn and smooth, and pushed apart in places, so that the road has the exact appearance of those ancient paved highways leading out of Rome which one sees in pictures.