 the quadrangle were placed perpendicularly in the
ground a hundred or more slender, fresh-cut poles, stripped of their bark, and
decorated at the end with a floating pennon of white tappa, the whole being
fenced about with a little picket of canes. For what purpose these singular
ornaments were intended, I in vain endeavoured to discover.
    Another most striking feature of the performance was exhibited by a score of
old men, who sat cross-legged in the little pulpits, which encircled the trunks
of the immense trees growing in the middle of the enclosure. These venerable
gentlemen, who I presume were the priests, kept up an uninterrupted monotonous
chant, which was nearly drowned in the roar of drums. In the right hand they
held a finely woven grass fan, with a heavy black wooden handle, curiously
chased: these fans they kept in continual motion.
    But no attention whatever seemed to be paid to the drummers or to the old
priests, the individuals who composed the vast crowd present being entirely
taken up in chatting and laughing with one another, smoking, drinking arva, and
eating. For all the observation it attracted, or the good it achieved, the whole
savage orchestra might, with great advantage to its own members and the company
in general, have ceased the prodigious uproar they were making.
    In vain I questioned Kory-Kory and others of the natives as to the meaning
of the strange things that were going on; all their explanations were conveyed
in such a mass of outlandish gibberish and gesticulation that I gave up the
attempt in despair. All that day the drums resounded, the priests chanted, and
the multitude feasted and roared till sunset, when the throng dispersed, and the
Taboo groves were again abandoned to quiet and repose. The next day the same
scene was repeated until night, when this singular festival terminated.
 

                                  Chapter XXIV

    Ideas suggested by the Feast of Calabashes - Inaccuracy of certain published
    Accounts of the Islands - A Reason - Neglected State of Heathenism in the
    Valley - Effigy of a dead Warrior - A singular Superstition - The Priest
    Kolory and the God Moa Artua - Amazing Religious Observance - A dilapidated
    Shrine - Kory-Kory and the Idol - An Inference.
 
Although I had been baffled in my attempts to learn the origin of the Feast of
Calabashes, yet it seemed very plain to me that it was principally, if not
wholly, of a religious character. As a religious solemnity, however, it had not
at all corresponded with the horrible descriptions of Polynesian worship which
we have received in some published narratives, and especially in those accounts
of the evangelised islands with which the
