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Right across this path, half lost in shadow, half sunlit, the lianas hung their ropes The hotoo tree, with its powdering of delicate blosso its lost loveliness to the sun; in the shade the scarlet hibiscus burned like a flame Artu and breadfruit trees and cocoa-nut bordered the way

As they proceeded the trees grew denser and the patha sharp turn, the path ended in a valley carpeted with fern This was the place that always filled Emmeline with an undefined dread One side of it was all built up in terraces with huge blocks of stone--blocks of stone so enormous, that the wonder was how the ancient builders had put the their roots between the interstices of the blocks At their base, slightly tilted forward as if with the sinkage of years, stood a great stone figure roughly carved, thirty feet high at least--ure and the terraces, the valley itself, and the very trees that grew there, inspired Eue fear

People had been here once; so ae seemed to her to hide voices at times, even as its shadow concealed forms It was indeed an uncanny place to be alone in even under the broad light of day All across the Pacific for thousands of h the islands

These tereat terraces of stone, e They hint at one religion, and a time when the sea space of the Pacific was a continent, which, sinking slowly through the ages, has left only its higher lands and hill-tops visible in the form of islands Round these places the woods are thicker than elsewhere, hinting at the presence there, once, of sacred groves The idols are iue; the stores have cast over them a veil The sphinx is understandable and a toy cos, some of which have a stature of fifty feet, whose creation is veiled in absolute ods of a people for ever and for ever lost

The "stone iven the idol of the valley; and sohts would stray that way, she would picture hi straight before him