LOOK at a map of southern Eng-land, and the South Downs seem no more than a puny thread between the stockbroker belt and the seaside sprawl But stand on their ridge and everything changes. The moon still shone, the palms were black, surf was breaking whitely on the reef. There seemed to be a figure standing out on the reef as well. But who? Why? The scene seemed oddly remote and inaccessible.

At 4am I went down to the lagoon for a last glimpse, looking eastward in the direction of Mururoa, site of the French nuclear tests, though I did not know that at the time. The grandson of the first Prime Minister, whom we met out cycling and who had studied at Cambridge, was able to recite 48 generations of his genealogy, which makes Burke's Peerage sound like the week in review.Rarotonga being in the middle of nowhere, aircraft come and go at crazy hours We were to leave at 5.30 in the morning. In the week we were there I was told that their ancestors came from: India, Java, Taiwan, Israel, Peru. Rarotongans, like Basques and Hungarians, endlessly ponder the origins of their race. Could it be that migrant Rarotongan adventurers, reaching Easter Island 3,000 miles away and then unable to get home, had built their moai in evocation of the shape above us?Well, the island lends itself to this sort of wild fancy. Above, the clouds drifted away to reveal a pinnacle of black stone.From that angle by the cairn, there was something familiar about its silhouette: it looked uncannily like the statues on Easter Island. This steeple of rock dominates the skyline from many parts of Rarotonga and, like headlands and pinnacles throughout Polynesia, had once been worshipped as a god.

The rain stopped, and looking down we could see sunlight appear on the treetops below A dove called: "O-oo-ooo" Another, further off, answered. They were back on a sea route across Polynesia which they have used for two millennia.Our walk took us out of town, through a village which was fast asleep or deserted except for some hectic piglets; beyond that rose the forest We had been told that the track was an "easy climb" This was untrue. We hauled ourselves up by the roots of trees vertically for a mile or two. Then we reached a clearing on a narrow plateau, on which stood an odd circular pile of stones about waist high: it was hard to tell whether this was a man-made or natural accretion.