“Tokolmé it is called,” he replied. “It was once a place of great strength; a fortress was made here in the mountains, in the olden time—in the old days, long before white men came to Ponapé. See, all around us, half-buried in the ground, are some of the blocks of stone which were carried up from the face of the mountain which overlooks Metalanien “—he pointed to several huge basaltic prisms lying near—“these stones were the lower course of the fort; the upper part was of wood, great forest trees, cut down and squared into lengths of two fathoms. And it is because of the cutting down of these trees, which were very old and took many hundred years to grow, that the place where we now sit, and all around us, is so clear. For the blood of many hundreds of men have sunk into it, and because it was the blood of innocent people, there be now nothing that will grow upon it.”
The place was certainly quite bare of trees, though encompassed by the forest on all sides lower down. One reason for this may have been that in addition to the large basaltic prisms, the ground was thickly covered with a layer of smaller and broken stones to which time and the action of the weather had given a comparatively smooth surface.
“Tell me of it, Rai,” I said.
“Presently, friend, after we have had the drink of kava and eaten some food. Ah, this green kava of ours is good to drink, not like the weak, dried root that the women of Samoa chew and mix with much water in a wooden bowl. What goodness can there be in that? Here, we take the root fresh from the soil when it is full of juice, beat it to a pulp and add but little water.”
“It is good, Rai,” I admitted, “but give me only a little. It is too strong for me and a full bowl would cause me to stagger and fall.”
He laughed good-naturedly as he handed me a half coco-nut shell containing a little of the thick greenish-yellow liquid. And then, after all had drunk in turn, the baskets of cold baked food were opened and we ate; and then as we lit our pipes and smoked Rai told us the story of Tokolmé.
“In those days, before the white men came here to this country, though they had been to islands not many days' sail from here by canoe, there were but two great chiefs of Ponapé—now there are seven—one was Lirou, who ruled all this part of the land, and who dwelt at Roân Kiti with two thousand people, and the other was Roka, king of all the northern coast and ruler of many villages. Roka was a great voyager and had sailed as far to the east as Kusaie, which is two hundred leagues from here, and his people were proud of him and his great daring and of the slaves that he brought back with him from Kusaie.{*}
* Strongs Island.
“Here in Tokolmé lived three hundred and two-score people, who owed allegiance neither to Lirou nor Roka, for their ancestors had come to Ponapé from Yap, an island far to the westward. After many years of fighting on the coast they made peace with Lirou's father, who gave them all this piece of country as a free gift, and without tribute, and many of their young men and women intermarried with ours, for the language and customs of Yap are akin to those of Ponapé.
“Soon after peace was made and Tolan, chief of the strangers, had built the village and made plantations, he died, and as he left no son, his daughter Leâ became chieftainess, although she was but fourteen years of age.