530 COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
of Mr. Palmer in the Journal of the Royal Geographical 
Society for 1870. At the extreme south-west end of the 
island are a great number (80 or 100) stone houses built 
in regular lines, with doors facing the sea. The walls are 
5 feet thick and feet high, built of layers of irregular 
flat stones, but lined inside with upright flat slabs. The 
inner dimensions are about 40 feet by 13 feet, and the 
roofing is formed by thin slabs overlapping like tiles till 
the centre opening is about 5 feet wide, which is then 
covered in by long thin slabs of stone. The upright 
slabs inside are painted in red, black, and white, with 
figures of birds, faces, mythic animals, and geometric 
figures. Great quantities of a univalve shell were found 
in many of the houses, and in one of them a statue, 
8 feet high and weighing 4 tons, now in the British 
Museum. Near these houses, the rocks on the brink of 
the sea-cliffs are carved into strange shapes, resembling 
tortoises, or into odd faces. There are hundreds of these 
sculptures, often overgrown with bushes and grass. 
Much more extraordinary are the platforms and 
images now to be described. On nearly every headland 
round the coast of the island are enormous platforms of 
stone, now more or less in ruins. Towards the sea they 
present a wall 20 or 30 feet high and from 200 to 300 
feet long, built of large stones often 6 feet long, and accu¬ 
rately fitted together without cement. Being built on 
sloping ground, the back wall is lower, usually about a 
yard high, leaving a platform at the top 30 feet wide, 
with square ends. Landwards a wide terrace, more than 
100 feet broad, has been levelled, terminated by another 
step formed of stone. On these platforms are large slabs 
serving as pedestals to the images which once stood upon 
them, but which have now been thrown down in all 
directions and more or less mutilated. One of the most 
