The Englishmen soon learned more about the story of Amo and Purea for they set out, only five days after this visit, on a tour round the island, and on June 29th, arrived at Papara, after having made the circuit of Taiarapu. Both Cook and Banks, in their Journals, gave accounts of what they saw there, and from these Hawkesworth made up the description which is published in the "Voyage."

"We were now [June 29] not far from the district called PAPARRA, which belonged to our friends Oamo and Oberea, where we proposed to sleep. We went on shore about an hour before night, and found that they were both absent, having left their habitations to pay us a visit at Matavai: this however, did not alter our purpose; we took up our quarters at the house of Oberea, which, though small, was very neat, and at this time had no inhabitant but her father, who received us with looks that bid us welcome. Having taken possession we were willing to improve the little daylight that was left us, and therefore walked out to a point upon which we had seen, at a distance, trees that are here called Etoa, which generally distinguish the places where these people bury the bones of their dead; their name for such burying grounds, which are also places of worship, is Morai. We were soon struck with the sight of an enormous pile, which we were told was the Morai of Oamo and Oberea, and the principal piece of Indian architecture in the island. It was a pile of stone-work raised pyramidically upon an oblong base or square two hundred and sixty-seven feet long and eighty-seven wide. It was built like the small pyramidal mounds upon which we sometimes fix the pillar of a sun-dial, where each side is a flight of steps; the steps, however, at the sides were broader than those at the ends, so that it terminated not in a square of the same figure with the base, but in a ridge like the roof of a house; there were eleven of these steps, each of which was four feet high, so that the height of the pile was forty-four feet: each step was formed of one course of white coral stone which was neatly squared and polished; the

Indigenous Histories