158 CAPTAIN COOK'S VOYAGES 



and driving all the people out of it. By this they concluded 

 that he had been robbed of his property, and that they were 

 not less scrupulous of stealing from one another than from 

 those on whom they practised every little fraud they could 

 think, and generally with success ; for they had no sooner 

 detected them in one than they found out another. A 

 party who had been sent out in the morning to view the 

 country now returned. They had not proceeded far before 

 a middle-aged man, punctured from head to foot, and his 

 face painted with a sort of white pigment, appeared with a 

 spear in his hand, and walked alongside of them, making 

 signs to his countrymen to keep at a distance, and not to 

 molest them. When he had pretty well effected this, he 

 hoisted a piece of white cloth on his spear, placed himself 

 in the front, and led the way with this ensign of peace. 



On the east side, near the sea, they met with three plat- 

 forms of stone work, or rather the ruins of them. On each 

 had stood four large statues,* but they were all fallen down 

 from two of them, and also one from the third ; all except 

 one were broken by the fall, or in some measure defaced. 

 Mr. Wales measured this one, and found it to be fifteen feet 

 in length, and six feet broad over the shoulders. Each 

 statue had on its head a large cylindric stone of a red colour, 

 wrought perfectly round. The one they measured, which 

 was not by far the largest, was fifty- two inches high, and 

 fifty-six in diameter. In some the upper corner of the 

 cylinder was taken off in a sort of concave quarter round, 

 but in others the cylinder was entire. 



Beyond this they came to the most fertile part of the 

 island they saw, it being interspersed with plantations of 

 potatoes, sugar-canes, and plantain-trees ; but they could 

 find no water, except what the natives twice or thrice 

 brought them, which, though brackish and stinking, was 

 rendered acceptable by the extremity of their thirst. They 

 also passed some huts, the owners of which met them with 

 roasted potatoes and sugar-canes ; but at the very time 

 some were relieving the thirsty and hungry, there were others 

 who endeavoured to steal from them the very things which 

 had been given them. At last, to prevent worse conse- 

 quences, they were obliged to fire a load of small shot at one 

 who was so audacious as to snatch the bag which contained 

 everything they carried with them. The shot hit him in the 

 back, on which he dropped the bag, ran a little way, and then 

 fell ; but he afterwards got up and walked and what be- 

 came of him, they knew not, nor whether he was much 

 wounded. This affair occasioned some delay, and drew the 

 natives together : they presently saw the man who had 

 * See the voyage of Roggewein. 



