710 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



iuferred from tlie statements contained in these pages, is never an 

 elaborate one, it may readily be seen tliat they never safter for lack of 

 food of some sort, the ju-incipal items being sngar cane, taro, and sweet 

 potatoes. Then, too, they are not heavy eaters, and gluttony with its 

 attendent corpulency, so common in some of the other islands, is quite 

 unknown here. 



There are no fences or inclosures of any sort about their houses, 

 which stand in the open field, with the grass growing to the doors, and 

 nothing of an ottensive nature was observable in the vicinity. 



POPULATION, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. 



It is difficult to obtain accurate information regarding the population 

 of the island prior to the year 1860. That a numerous people must 

 have existed here during the days of the image builders seems to be 

 well attested by the works they have left behind them; the multitudes 

 of colossal stone images and crowns; the numbers and vast size of the 

 platforms on which these stood; the great paved areas beside them, 

 which afforded room for large assemblages ; the masses of foundation 

 stones scattered over the island, many of which, still in position, show 

 the strange shapes given to the houses which were erected upon them, 

 and even admitting that these antiquities, and the work of fashioning 

 them, covers a period of many years, the fact remains, nevertheless, 

 that the immense labor involved, aided merely by the rude stone imple- 

 ments, which alone they were known to possess, must have necessitated 

 the employmentof a vastnumber of laborers. These, with their families, 

 those engaged in the cultivation of the soil, in fishing and otherwise 

 providing food, the aged and infirm, and those employed in other pur- 

 suits, must have made uj) an aggregate much larger than would at first 

 sight appear. 



With reference to the length of time covered by these works, it would 

 seem, from the large number of images still to be seen on Rana Eoraka, 

 both inside the crater and on its outer slope — some finished, others only 

 partly so, and others still in the quarries — that there was a large amount 

 of work in jirocess of execution at the same moment, and that, judging 

 from the condition in Avhich it was found, some sudden calamity must 

 have overtaken the workmen, causing all labor to cease abruptly. 



Indeed in respect to the astonishing number of volcanic stones so 

 evenly scattered over the surface of the island, especially on the eastern 

 half, it does not seem reasonable to suppose that they were there when 

 the place was densely populated, of which latter circumstance there 

 can scarcely be a doubt. This remark applies with especial force to 

 the great plain at the foot and to the westward of Rana Roraka, where 

 a large town is supposed to have existed, inhabited in part, it may be 

 presumed, by the great numbers of workmen emploj^ed in the quarries 

 of that mountain. Admitting this to be true and associating this with 

 the fact that large numbers of the images seen in this vicinity are in 



