698 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1«97. 



grass. There were several elevated platforms, edged off with bowlders, 

 wliicli were for sleeping places, and the remains of an ancient fireplace 

 could be traced in one corner. Two huge rocks, with a flourishing 

 tobacco plant growing between, guarded the entrance, from which a 

 grass-covered lawn inclined downward to the rocks at the water side. 



The men were accommodated in another comfortable cave at about 

 100 yards distance inland, and the camp fire waske])t brightly burning 

 in a clear space among the bowlders on the declivity hard by. 



At no time during our trip were we without food. On the contrary, 

 sheep were plentiful all over the island. Drinking water, so indispen- 

 sable, and yet so scarce on Rapa Nui, was obtained from several sources 

 near Camp Baird, but all was equally unpalatable. Our first supply 

 (we remained at this camp about three days) was obtained from a 

 so called Avell, half a mile distant, located among the rocks near the 

 edge of the bay, and Avas salt at high water and more or less brackish 

 at all times. 



The water from a spring discovered by Quartermaster Lowrie was 

 also unpalatable, and a supply obtained from the crater of Rana Roraka, 

 near by, owing to its animal and vegetable impurities, was more so. 

 It is to this crater that by far the larger number of cattle resort to 

 drink, and their grazing ground, for this reason, is mostly located on 

 this part of the island. 



On the evening of our arrival, December 24, having partaken of a 

 hearty dinner and lighted our cigars, we stretched ourselves, weary 

 and foot sore, on the grass in front of our cave. The conversation, 

 brisk and merry at first, soon flagged, became desultory, and presently 

 ceased entirely. It was "the uight before Christmas;" our mere physi- 

 cal, corporeal nature was pressing the soil of Raj)a Nui, but the spirit, 

 our immaterial part, was many leagues away. 



At various times during our stay the writer purchased crania which 

 the natives offered Tiim for sale, and among these were several skulls of 

 ancient Kings, bearing peculiar marks which, Mr. Salmon assured him, 

 he then saw for the first time, and of the genuineness of which he had no 

 doubt. 



Christmas forenoon was passed in exjjloring the region in the vicinity 

 of the camp, several cairns being opened with variable success in the 

 matter of specimens. In the afternoon the crater of Rana Roraka was 

 visited and note taken of the very numerous finished and unfinished 

 images, some standing, others prostrate, scattered over its slope and 

 the great plain at its base, where there is ev^ery reason to believe once 

 stood a i^opulous town. The quarries, " workshops," were also visited 

 and the many partly completed monoliths, still attached to the original 

 rock, examined. As in Egypt, where, in the quarries at Syene, near the 

 First Cataract, the largest obelisk still lies unfinished, so here, in one 

 of the excavations on tl^e outer slope of the crater, may be seen the 

 largest of the stone images to be found on Rapa Nui in an incomplete 



