At a certain corner of the road our scholar-guide struck off to his left into the twilight of the forest.  We were now on one of the ancient native roads, plunged in a high vault of wood, and clambering, it seemed, at random over boulders and dead trees; but the lad wound in and out and up and down without a check, for these paths are to the natives as marked as the king’s highway is to us; insomuch that, in the days of the man-hunt, it was their labour rather to block and deface than to improve them.  In the crypt of the wood the air was clammy and hot and cold; overhead, upon the leaves, the tropical rain uproariously poured, but only here and there, as through holes in a leaky roof, a single drop would fall, and make a spot upon my mackintosh.  Presently the huge trunk of a banyan hove in sight, standing upon what seemed the ruins of an ancient fort; and our guide, halting and holding forth his arm, announced that we had reached the paepae tapu.

Paepae signifies a floor or platform such as a native house is built on; and even such a paepae—­a paepae hae—­may be called a paepae tapu in a lesser sense when it is deserted and becomes the haunt of spirits; but the public high place, such as I was now treading, was a thing on a great scale.  As far as my eyes could pierce through the dark undergrowth, the floor of the forest was all paved.  Three tiers of terrace ran on the slope of the hill; in front, a crumbling parapet contained the main arena; and the pavement of that was pierced and parcelled out with several wells and small enclosures.  No trace remained of any superstructure, and the scheme of the amphitheatre was difficult to seize.  I visited another in Hiva-oa, smaller but more perfect, where it was easy to follow rows of benches, and to distinguish isolated seats of honour for eminent persons; and where, on the upper platform, a single joist of the temple or dead-house still remained, its uprights richly carved.  In the old days the high place was sedulously tended.  No tree except the sacred banyan was suffered to encroach upon its grades, no dead leaf to rot upon the pavement.  The stones were smoothly set, and I am told they were kept bright with oil.  On all sides the guardians lay encamped in their subsidiary huts to watch and cleanse it.  No other foot of man was suffered to draw near; only the priest, in the days of his running, came there to sleep—­perhaps to dream of his ungodly errand; but, in the time of the feast, the clan trooped to the high place in a body, and each had his appointed seat.  There were places for the chiefs, the drummers, the dancers, the women, and the priests.  The drums—­ perhaps twenty strong, and some of them twelve feet high—­ continuously throbbed in time.  In time the singers kept up their long-drawn, lugubrious, ululating song; in time, too, the dancers, tricked out in singular finery, stepped, leaped, swayed, and gesticulated—­their plumed fingers fluttering in the air like butterflies.