The Arizona champion., 1891-02-21
PRESERVED IN STONE.
One of the Mysteries of the
 South Seas.
RECORDS OF | PREHISTORIC PEOPLE.
The Wonders of Easter Islands. Mas
 sive Ruins.

years ago, form one of the largest archi-
 pelagos of the Pacific, covering sea area
 of more than 2, 900 miles, and comprising
 over 500 separate fragments of land.
 Some of these islets are mere rocks,
 many are uninhabited and few are
 very populous. Excepting those at the
 eastern end of the chain, and the large
 island of Tap at the western end, they
 have been rarely, some of them never,
 visited by white men, unless in the dubi-
 ous form of "beach combers."
 Kusaie, sometimes called Strong isl and, is about fifty miles in circumfer- ence, is of basaltic formation, has a large extent of high ground, and boasts | of two excellent harbors. The people are reputedly industrious and peaceable | for South Sea 1slanders-and they have king of their own. They belong, to all appearance, to the Polynesian race, but travellers have declared that they seem capable of higher civilization than the average Polynesian. It is re- markable that the chiefs communicate by signs and speech not understood by the common people.
 LITTLE EASTER ISLAND.
 If we traverse some few thousand miles of ocean to the very eastern out skirts of Polynesia we shall find the lit tie island called Easter island, which is barely ten miles long by four miles broad, which has no trees, no running water, and very little about it to attract settlers. It is of volcanic origin, and one of the extinct craters is over 1000 feet high.
 Yet this physically uninteresting isl and, peopled by Polynesians of the fair type, such as are found in the Society islands, is the greatest mystery of the Pa ciic. It is covered with remains of some prehistoric people of whom every record but that preserved in stone seems to have vanished.
 At the southwest end of this little isl and there are to be found the ruins of nearly hundred stone houses, built in regular lines and facing the sea. The walls of these houses are five feet thick and over five feet high, built of layers of flat stones and lined inside with fiat slabs. Internally the houses measure about forty feet long by thirteen feet wide, and they are roofed over with slabs overlapping like tiles. The inside walls are painted in three colors-red, black and white-with figures of birds and mystic beasts and faces and geometrical figures. In one of these houses was found curious stone statue eight feet high and weighing about four tons, which is now in the British museum.
 The sea cliffs near this ancient settle ment are carved into grotesque shapes not unlike the paintings on the walls, and the coast is marked with hundreds of these strange sculptures.
 Again, on each headland of the island there is an enormous stone platform, built of hewn blocks of great size, fitted together without cement. They are built onsloping ground, presenting on the sea- ward side wall face twenty or thirty feet high and two or three hundred feet long, and on the landward side a wall of about three feet in height rising from a level terrace.
 EVIDENCES OF WORSHIP.
 These platforms have evidently had to do with the religious practices of the early settlers, whoever they were; for upon all of them are large stone pedes- tals which have supported images, and on some of them broken images are still to be seen. On one platform fifteen images were found, in size ranging from | three to thirty-fve feet in height. They | are of human shape, representing the | upper part of the body only, with arms | and hands close to the sides. The heads are cut flat to allow of crowns being | placed on them, which crowns seem to | have been made, not of the same mate | rial as the statues, but of red tufa. This has been traced to an extinct crater | within few miles of the houses, and on | the brink of this crater large number of crowns were found, finished and | readyfor removal before some strange fate depeopled the island of these an- cient worshipers.
 The images themselves are made of gray lava, which is only found at quite another crater at the other end of the island. At this crater, called Otouli, there are several finished and partly finished images, just as they were left by the workmen. It is remarkable that the present natives have small wooden images carved out of a hard, dark wood, but these images are hideous and differ altogether from the dignified statues of the platforms.
 The present inhabitants are simply tattooed savages, who are more than to have taste for cannibal- ism. They live in long, low houses, in shape like an upturned canoe, with only a single opening about two feet square, wholly unlike the massive stone villages we have described. There may have been wood on the island at one time, for the natives are well provided with clubs and spears, and they also use double headed paddle which has not been ob- served elsewhere in the Pacific. But, on the other hand, they may have brought these implements with them, for they have tradition that their great-great- emigrated from the island of Rapaiti, about 2,000 miles away, and just south of the Austra group. Be this as it may, they call their present abode Rapahui, or Great Rapa, to dis l tinguish it from what they call their I |