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The priesthood was hereditary, descending from father to son. Under the laws of Tonga the high-priests could marry only the daughters of the king. Their sons became priests, and the daughters occupied a position analogous to that of the Vestal Virgins and were not permitted to marry. This long line is now extinct, the last of the Tui-Tongas having been laid with his fathers in 1863.
   About 6 miles beyond these tombs, on the eastern shore, stands an ancient cromlech, or more properly speaking a dolmen. This interesting monument is composed of three blocks of coral concrete. The two up-rights are 14 feet high, 8 feet wide and nearly 4 feet thick, and weigh over 15 tons each, while the cross-piece is somewhat smaller and weighs about 10 tons. The native tradition is that these larger masses of stone were cut from the coral reef about 2 miles distant, and that the vertex was brought by one of their large canoes from Wallis Island. While it is possible for this legend to be founded upon fact, there is room for strong doubt, since the same formation exists upon both islands; but the difficulty of handling a stone of that size and weight, and of carrying it a distance of 600 miles by sea, would hardly be warranted when it could be quarried on their own shores. Viewed, however, as a trophy, and the cromlech as a sort of triumphal arch to commemorate a victory, (for the Tongans wore perhaps the most successful of the ocean rovers of the Pacific) the legend of the stone seems entitled to greater credence than the neglected pile would at first warrant. The traditions do not go back far enough to tell us by whom this cromlech was erected, but simply assert its erection by one of the early kings on the advent of his dynasty, a fact which the disintegration of the stone, due to age, would seem to corroborate. The Samoans formerly erected stone pillars to the memory of their chiefs, but the most interesting relic of former ages in this group, is the ruins of a heathen temple located in the mountains near the center of the island of Opolu. Secreted in an almost inaccessible gully, this temple was built in the form of an ellipse, measuring 57 feet one way by 39 feet the other. The roof was evidently thatched with pandanus leaves, as is the custom to the present day, but three large columns of basaltic rock formed the center supports, while the eaves rested upon the pillars of the same stone placed at intervals of 3 feet apart around the ellipse. Many of these stones are still standing, but the site has been almost obscured by a dense tropical growth.
   Within a few feet of the old temple is an ancient tomb covered with a large block of stone and marked by an upright basaltic column. Samoan legends do not give much information about this ruin, but the Tongan traditions hold that the temple was built by them, after they had conquered the Samoans, and that the tomb is that of one of the Tui-Tongas who accompanied the successful expedition, and who died and was buried alongside of the temple. This conquest took place at least eight hundred years ago, for it was about this time that Malietoa I. was

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