698

grass. There were several elevated platforms, edged off with bowlders which were for sleeping places, and the remains of an ancient fireplace could be traced in one corner. Two huge rocks, with a flourishing tobacco plant growing between, guarded the entrance, from which a grass-covered lawn inclined downward to the rocks at the water side.
   The men were accommodated in another comfortable cave at about 100 yards distance inland, and the camp fire was kept brightly burning in a clear space among the bowlders on the declivity hard by.
   At no time during our trip were we without food. On the contrary, sheep were plentiful all over the island. Drinking water, so indispensable, and yet so scarce on Rapa Nui, was obtained from several sources near Camp Baird, but all was equally unpalatable. Our first supply (we remained at this camp about three days) was obtained from a so-called well, half a mile distant, located among the rocks near the edge of the bay, and was salt at high water and more or less brackish at all times.
   The water from a spring discovered by Quartermaster Lowrie was also unpalatable, and a supply obtained from the crater of Rana Roraka, near by, owing to its animal and vegetable impurities, was more so. It is to this crater that by far the larger number of cattle resort to drink, and their grazing ground, for this reason, is mostly located on this part of the island.
   On the evening of our arrival, December 24, having partaken of a hearty dinner and lighted our cigars, we stretched ourselves, weary and foot sore, on the grass in front of our cave. The conversation, brisk and merry at first, soon flagged, became desultory, and presently ceased entirely. It was "the night before Christmas;" our mere physical, corporeal nature was pressing the soil of Rapa Nui, but the spirit, our immaterial part, was many leagues away.
   At various times during our stay the writer purchased crania which the natives offered him for sale, and among these were several skulls of ancient Kings, bearing peculiar marks which, Mr. Salmon assured him, he then saw for the first time, and of the genuineness of which he had no doubt.
   Christmas forenoon was passed in exploring the region in the vicinity of the camp, several cairns being opened with variable success in the matter of specimens. In the afternoon the crater of Rana Roraka was visited and note taken of the very numerous finished and unfinished images, some standing, others prostrate, scattered over its slope and the great plain at its base, where there is every reason to believe once stood a populous town. The quarries, "workshops," were also visited and the many partly completed monoliths, still attached to the original rock, examined. As in Egypt, where, in the quarries at Syene, near the First Cataract, the largest obelisk still lies unfinished, so here, in one of the excavations on the outer slope of the crater, may be seen the largest of the stone images to be found on Rapa Nui in an incomplete

698