130 EASTER ISLAND. 



it rose to view, he gave pious names: Magdalena served to designate 

 Fatuhiva, then followed San Pedro, Santa Christina, and La Dominica. 

 It was upon the last, Tahuata, that he elected to land. This was on the 

 day of Santiago and to the bay which promised anchorage he gave the 

 name of MadredeDios. All this piety was but the prelude to the bless- 

 ing of the heathen land. In all the pomp which belonged to the dignity 

 of an admiral of Spain Mendafia set foot upon the shore. The altar 

 was erected in the abode of joyous paganism ; the well-ordered pomp of 

 the ritual of the mass attracted the imitation of the savages if it left 

 their reverence untouched; the European history of the Marquesas 

 opens with the solemn act of religion. Even in this solemnity we have 

 the record of the straying attention which sometimes finds food for 

 secular thought in church. Beside the admiral sat his wife, Dona 

 Ysabel Berreto, destined by bitter fate to become herself an admiral and 

 to lead the broken expedition home and away from the inhospitable 

 land which was to hold forever hidden the corpse of her husband. Beside 

 Dona Ysabel, through all the ceremonies, sat a woman of the island race 

 (the chronicler of the voyage narrates that she was more beautiful than 

 the ladies of Lima), and fanned the lady with a fan of curious workman- 

 ship. Her hair was most magnificent; Dona Ysabel asked to have a 

 lock, an ignorant indignity which added its mite to the score which the 

 islanders soon sought to settle with their disturbing visitors. "Prob- 

 ablement, " says Vincendon Dumoulin, "peu d'heures apres le moment 

 ou les Espagnols avaient rendu grace au ciel de leur decouverte les mal- 

 heureux Noukahiviens suppliaient leurs divinites tutelaires de les 

 debarrasser de la presence de leurs terribles visiteurs. " Three crosses 

 set up along the beach, a name and a date carved in the bark of a tree, 

 one Marquesan who had been taught the parrot recitation of a sacred 

 name this was all that the Church gave to the Marquesas when first 

 it came into contact with their savagery. Before the fleet had passed 

 from sight the crosses, we may be sure, were converted to timber uses ; 

 the bark of a tree in the Pacific tropics is no material for enduring mem- 

 orials of discovery ; as lightly as learned the sacred names would vanish 

 from use. This first coming of religion with all its pomp was but vain 

 show; it left no mark whatever. 



Even under expeditionary circumstances and in the heart of savagery 

 there must have been a certain dignity m this sacrifice of the mass by 

 Mendafia's men; the Spaniard is mannerly, the Church is ritual. The 

 next attempt of religion to ameliorate the Marquesas is absurd. 



Two centuries and two years have passed when the ship Duff finds 

 her way into the very bay where Mendafia's chaplains had sung the 

 mass and set the crosses. For all but the last fragment of these two 

 oblivious centuries the knowledge of the Marquesas was kept to the 

 islanders, no hardy shipman had cared to seek them out and none had 

 chanced upon them in their happy seclusion until Cook restored them 



