188 MYSTIC ISLES 



such a dule countenance as his, dark naturally with his 

 Welsh and Tahitian blood, and shaded by the gloom 

 of his soul. He looked regretfully at Captain Pincher. 



"You are only repeating the untruthful assertion of 

 that clergyman," he said accusingly. "He put it in a 

 pamphlet in French. My people have had to do with 

 Easter Island for forty years. I lived there several 

 years and, as you know, I made that island what it is 

 now, a cattle and sheep ranch. It is the strangest place, 

 with the strangest history in the world. If we knew who 

 settled it originally and carved those stone gods the 

 Dutch sailor spoke of, we would know more about the 

 human race and its wanderings. 



"The Peruvians murdered and stole the Easter Is- 

 landers. Just before we took hold there, a gang of 

 blackbirders from Peru went there and killed and took 

 away many hundreds of them. They sold them to the 

 guano diggings in the Chincha Islands. Only those 

 escaped death or capture who hid in the dark caverns. 

 Nearly all those taken away died soon. We then made 

 contracts with some of those left, and took them to 

 Tahiti to work. It is true they died, too, most of them, 

 but some you can find where McHenry lives half a mile 

 from here at Patutoa. We sold off the stock to Chil- 

 eans, and that country owns the island now. 



"I think the island had a superior race once. There 

 are immense platforms of stone, like the paepaes of the 

 Marquesas, only bigger, and the stones are all fitted 

 together without cement. They built them on promon- 

 tories facing the sea. Some are three hundred feet long, 

 and the walls thirty feet high. On these platforms 

 there were huge stone gods that have been thrown 



