180 THE LAST CRUISE OF THE CARNEGIE 



is from these that the natives get their building materials. A 

 few years ago they had used up the last of the timber from a wreck, 

 and were in need of more, when a schooner carrying Oregon pine 

 was destroyed in a storm. Unfortunately for the inhabitants, 

 the only thing they saw from this disaster was the crew of the 

 vessel. These men had navigated a whale-boat hundreds of 

 miles to the Island. Mr. Edmunds describes what mental dis- 

 tress it was to realize that the valuable cargo of lumber was 

 floating around somewhere in the Pacific, when they needed it 

 so badly themselves. 



The description given by Mr. Edmunds of the agony these 

 men suffered in reaching Hangaroa village was extremely vivid. 

 It made the literary attempts to portray such an experience look 

 pale by comparison. The fellows had to remain here almost a 

 year before a ship from Chile called, to take them off. One of the 

 crew found the boredom too great and shot himself. 



There are some exciting yarns about the war-period. On one 

 occasion the German Asiatic fleet used Easter Island as a rendez- 

 vous and carried off beef and mutton. Another time, the S. M. S. 

 Prinz Eitel Friedrich came into Cook's Bay with a French bark 

 in tow, which carried a cargo of coal. After the coal was trans- 

 ferred into her own bunkers, she sank the captured vessel in the 

 roadstead. The local populace at first did not know that a war 

 had been declared, and were rather mystified by these events. 

 But through the boasting of some of the junior officers, the in- 

 formation leaked out. The Routledge Expedition was here at 

 the time, and anxious about the safety of their British ship, the 

 Mana. On their return they informed the Chilean and British 

 authorities that the neutrality of Easter Island had been violated. 

 But by that time Von Spec's squadron was operating off the 

 Falkland Islands. 



A few days later, the staff together with the two exiles made 

 an excursion to Rano Kao. This old volcano rises immediately 

 to the south of the village to about thirteen hundred feet, and 

 contains a fine crater-lake. Its surface, half a mile in diameter, 

 is covered with a dense mat of vegetation — so thick that the 

 cattle walk with safety on its surface, and small trees grow on 



