Gente Hermosa. 
107 
ing both it and the Gente Hermosa of the charts 
equally well, gave it as his opinion that Quiros 
had assigned Ralcahaaga a wrong position on 
the chart he sent home to Spain. In the first 
place Rakahaaga has always, or at least 
within the last 200 years, carried a population 
of over 500 people, while Swain’s Island was 
uninhabited up to within fifty years ago, and 
although there were found a few stone hatchets 
which showed human occupancy at some long 
past time, there were no signs of the great 
depressions and high banks resulting from the 
construction of artificial swamps for the cultiva¬ 
tion of taro. The presence of these certainly 
would have proved that the island had sustained 
a permanent population, even though they had 
died out or been killed a hundred years back. 
It is, therefore, very evident from this fact 
alone that the old cartographers of Quiros’s 
voyage were in error, and that the island of 
“ beautiful people ” was the now well-known 
Rakahaaga. 
At the present time the population is something 
over 500. Fifty years ago, when it was visited 
yearly by many ships of the American whaling 
fleet, there were, it is said, over 3,000 natives 
