38 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



is a flight of steps on each side. In this building there are 

 eleven of such steps ; each step is about 4ft. in height, and 

 the breadth 4ft. Tin., but they decreased both in height and 

 breadth from the bottom to the top. On the middle of the 

 top stood the image of a bird carved in wood ; near it lay the 

 broken one of a fish carved in stone. There vras no hollow or 

 cavity in the inside, the whole being filled up with stones. 

 The outside was faced partly with hewn stones and partly 

 with others, and these were placed in such a manner as to 

 look very agreeable to the eye. Some of the hewn stones 

 were 4ft. Tin. by 2ft. 4in., and 15in. thick, and had been 

 squared and polished with some sort of an edge tool. On the 

 east side was enclosed with a stone wall a piece of ground, in 

 form of a square, 360ft. by 354ft. ; in this were growing several 

 cypress-trees and plantains. Bound about this marae were 

 several smaller ones all going to decay, and on the beach 

 between them and the sea lay scattered up and down a great 

 quantity of human bones. Not far from the great marae were 

 two or three pretty large altars, where lay the skull-bones of 

 some hogs and dogs."" 



In the absence of historical records, it is only from the 

 monuments themselves and their surroundings we can now 

 hope to recover their history. 



Easter Island, on which so many of these mysterious re- 

 mains are found, is one of the most isolated spots of land on 

 the surface of our globe, being about eighteen hundred miles 

 distant from the coast of South x^merica and fifteen hundred 

 from the Gambler Group, the nearest land. The island, only 

 thirty miles in circumference, was described by Cook as 

 barren, almost treeless, and very badly supplied with fresh 

 water, the formation volcanic, some of the peaks being over 

 1,000ft. elevation.! The monuments, which have long been 

 a subject of speculation, consist of stone houses, massively 

 built, and placed in rows or streets ; platforms from 

 200ft. to 800ft. in length, and 15ft. to 20ft. high on the 

 outer or seaward side, constructed of hewn stones dovetailed 

 together; stone statues 3ft. to 30ft. high, representing the 

 upper portion of a human figure, sometimes standing on the 

 platform and sometimes on the ground ; and sculptured rocks, 

 the subject being generally a human face. On the heads of 

 the larger figures crowns made from a red volcanic stone were 

 fitted. This material was formerly regarded as foreign to the 

 little island, but further exploration proved it was obtained 

 from a quarry at the south-west eiad of the island, another 

 quarry at the opposite end having furnished the grey lava out 



* " Captain Cook's Journal." 



t " Captain Cook's Third Voyage." 



