THE HUMAN SPECIES. 43 



landed, were found two parallel rows of squared upright 

 stones in the form of obelisks, each surmounted by a 

 coping block ; immediately recalling to mind the colos- 

 sal pillar-idols of Easter Island, which are known to 

 have been the work of a departed population, probably 

 of the same race that once inhabited Pitcairn's, the late 

 well known retreat of the mutineers of the Bounty. 

 These antique and now forsaken cities must have been 

 constructed by a people totally distinct from the pre- 

 sent inhabitants, and much more numerous than the 

 existing locality could now supply with food. The 

 group is entirely composed of volcanic cones, and of 

 low coral reef islands ; and we agree with Mr. Darwin 

 in opinion, that they are the remains of land once 

 much greater in extent, but sunken beneath the sea's 

 level, by the effect of the excavations of igneous ex- 

 haustion. The population was once unquestionably 

 organized in a social state ; it may have been a kind 

 of Austral Pelasgian people, distinct from the present 

 Jacalvas Biagoos, or Sea Gipsies, who always live on 

 the water ; but that one has wandered, as navigators 

 and workers in stone, across the whole breadth of the 

 South Seas, is proved by the monuments left on the 

 islands above mentioned, notwithstanding the great 

 distance they are asunder ; perhaps the builders of the 

 great pyramids in some of the Australasian islands, 

 again repeated, under the name of Morais, in many 

 of the South Sea groups the same who ultimately 

 passed to the west coast of America, and introduced 

 similar structures at Cholula and many other places ; 



