EASTER ISLAND—METRAUX 443 
In my opinion, the seemingly sudden interruption of work in the 
quarry is the most puzzling problem presented by Easter Island. Such 
an abrupt stoppage in the sculptors’ activity suggests some unfore- 
seen catastrophe, some extraordinary event which upset the entire 
life of the place. The natives have always had the idea that magic 
was at the bottom of the trouble whatever it was. There is a legend 
among them that an old sorceress, forgotten perhaps at a feast, may 
in her rage have put a curse on the quarry which frightened the work- 
ers forever away. 
If we reject this fabulous story, we have no explanation of the 
phenomenon for which there is any basis however slight. Was there 
possibly some surprise attack by a hostile group on the island in 
which all the skilled stone carvers were killed? Was there an attack 
from chance invaders? Were the natives suddenly overwhelmed by 
a violent epidemic, or did something about their first contact with 
white men cause them to lay down their tools once for all? We do not 
know the answer, and I doubt if we shall ever have any light on it. 
Whatever the truth about the end of their work, it appears that 
the last of the stone carvers were under the spell of a megalomaniac 
dream. Some of the unfinished statues are of enormous size, one of 
them 60 feet tall. Others are to be found in places out of which it 
seems impossible that they could ever have been taken. Perhaps their 
sculptors never intended to move these isolated giants. 
There are two types of Easter Island statues—those which still stand 
in the crater or at the foot of the volcano Ranoraraku, and those which 
once surmounted the ahwu or burial places. Though they are of the 
same stone and of the same general style, there are differences which 
are worth stressing. 
A word must be said about the burial places, which were situated at 
frequent intervals all along the shore in a line that encircled the 
island. Most of them were huge stone structures of a peculiar 
plan developed from the primitive cairn. In these large mausoleums, 
the crude heap of stones has evolved into a real monument through 
the use of a retaining wall. This wall, which formed a facade always 
facing seaward, was built of slabs or regular blocks of stone carefully 
fitted together into beautiful, smooth surfaces. Behind this is a level 
platform, and then a gradual slope backward, filled in with coarse 
rubble. The central portion of the facade juts out, like the apron 
of a stage, and on the top of this projecting part of the platform 
stood a row of statues with their faces turned inland. In the long 
slope leading up to this sacred place the dead were buried. 
The figures of the mausoleums or sanctuaries were in the nature of 
huge busts, the head being disproportionately large in relation to what 
appears of the body. The back of the head goes straight up from the 
shoulders and, with the vertical lines of the ears, gives the head a 
