especially those gentlemen who have been surveying and exploring in that island, I have been able to obtain much valuable information upon the archaeological things there found, and I am informed that these are so numerous, not only round the coasts where usually seen, but in the interior where seldom visited, that they would take months of hard work to even superficially examine; and there are caves and underground passages running in many directions for great distances beneath several parts of the island, and into which the present Polynesian natives have never ventured, the entrances to some of these passages being in over-hanging cliffs. One of the former visitors to Easter Island is now in Europe endeavouring to get up an expedition to explore Easter Island: he offers himself to largely subscribe towards the expenses of this expedition and to conduct its survey without fee or reward upon condition that he shall be permitted to retain one-sixth of what he is certain can be discoverd of value in the subterranean vaults and passages, from what he has seen and what he believes is still there to reward the discoverers; for he is convinced from his visit to Easter Island, and his investigations of the ancient cities of Central and S.W. America, that there are buried under the surface of Easter Island antiquities and valuables of rare kinds, which can be disinterred when a proper search and exploration is made for them.
    7. Everything revealed by the English, American, German, French, Spanish, Chilian, and other expeditions which have visited Easter Island, and examined the antiquities there, demonstrates to those studying carefully the subject that voyagers from places in S.W. and Central America went to Easter Island, and some of them there constructed the statues, platforms, stone-houses, and temples, with stone-paved roads and landing places, they carved their inscriptions on wood and on stone, these giving the names of their chiefs, heroes, and ancestors, and the traditions and histories of their people at first in America and then on the island, with the genealogies, their prayers and invocations, and other matters. After these ancient Americans had lived on this island for several centuries, receiving visits from parties of navigators from several places in America; at length a party of Polynesians from Oparo, who had obtained the knowledge from American navigators there in Oparo how navigate to Easter Island, sailed off from Oparo (or Rapa-iti) to Easter Island, which they called Rapa-nui, and took up residence there, living quietly for a time until their numbers increassing they became strong enough to commence wars with the American people, whom they call the "big-ears," and these continued for a long time, until the Polynesians had exterminated the Americans on Easter Island, whose statues over their burial places represent their chiefs. When all these Americans had been killed off, the Polynesiand relapsed into a lower barbarism, and all the former buildings and other works were discontinued, although they still continued to cultivate some of the vegtables the Americans had brought with them from America; viz., the tobacco, the sweet potato, the other potato, the sugar cane, and a few other things. The Polynesians could never make or read the inscriptions. Then came earthquakes which threw down the statues and broke the platforms, and caused the subsidence of large and considerable lower portions of the island, which sank and remained beneath the ocean, and made it difficult to procure a sufficient supply of fresh water, so that from the loss of their planting grounds and other causes the Polynesians continued to decrease in numbers, until the Peruvian slavers came there and removed most of the remaining, leaving only the most worthless on the island. None of these knew anything of importance about the former American people on this island, nor could any of them explain to the visiting navigators of any of the nations the interpretation of the hieroglyphics, or the true translation of the inscriptions. But if they found a tablet inscription on wood they burned it; while any inscriptions shown to them by different officers of the expeditions there, they either said they could not understand, nor could any of their people at any time, or they invented tales of their Polynesian ancestors