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Easter Island: Early Witnesses

George Cooke


710

inferred from the state cuts contained in these pages, is never an elaborate one, it may readily be seen that they never suffer for lack of food of some sort, the principal items being sugar cane, taro, and sweet potatoes. Then, too, they are not heavy eaters, and gluttony with its attendant corpulency, so common in some of the other islands, is quite unknown here.
   There are no fences or inclosures of any sort about their houses, which stand in the open field, with the grass growing to the doors, and nothing of an offensive nature was observable in the vicinity.

POPULATION, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS.

It is difficult to obtain accurate information regarding the population of the island prior to the year 1860. That a numerous people must have existed here during the days of the image builders seems to be well attested by the works they have left behind them; the multitudes of colossal stone images and crowns; the numbers and vast size of the platforms on which these stood; the great paved areas beside them, which afforded room for large assemblages; the masses of foundation stones scattered over the island, many of which, still in position, show the strange shapes given to the houses which were erected upon them, and even admitting that these antiquities, and the work of fashioning them, covers a period of many years, the fact remains, nevertheless, that the immense labor involved, aided merely by the rude stone implements, which alone they were known to possess, must have necessitated the employment of a vast number of laborers. These, with their families, those engaged in the cultivation of the soil, in fishing and otherwise providing food, the aged and infirm, and those employed in other pursuits, must have made up an aggregate much larger than would at first sight appear.
   With reference to the length of time covered by these works, it would seem, from the large number of images still to be seen on Rana Roraka, both inside the crater and on its outer slope - some finished, others only partly so, and others still in the quarries - that there was a large amount of work in process of execution at the same moment, and that, judging from the condition in which it was found, some sudden calamity must have overtaken the workmen, causing all labor to cease abruptly.
   Indeed in respect to the astonishing number of volcanic stones so evenly scattered over the surface of the island, especially on the eastern half, it does not seem reasonable to suppose that they were there when the place was densely populated, of which latter circumstance there can scarcely be a doubt. This remark applies with especial force to the great plain at the foot and to the westward of Rana Roraka, where a large town is supposed to have existed, inhabited in part, it may be presumed, by the great numbers of workmen employed in the quarries of that mountain. Admitting this to be true and associating this with the fact that large numbers of the images seen in this vicinity are in

710


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