takes varieties of forms. He is the representative of power; he is seated on his throne, with symbols of royal authority in his hands; his head touches the heavens and he wields the lightning and thunder, just as Indra of the Rig Veda. He may possibly have been the conqueror or unifier of the empire that could realize the idea of Easter island as a great Mausoleum; and the Pioneer, Hotua Matua, as the surviving representative of that empire made the most of the god.

    Some natives professed to read the tablets. Bishop Jaussen of Tahiti heard about these tablets; he heard that they were used as firewood. The Bishop tried to have them read. He says "we must give it up; there is nothing in it." Mr. Croft, an American resident of Papeete, writes in 1874 that he was cruelly disappointed in his interpreter. The Easter islander who was recommended to him came to him one Sunday and translated one of the tablets; he wrote down the translation, but mislaid it; the next time he got the reader to start again on the same tablet he gave a different translation; he was asked to come again; in the meantime the original translation was found, and this was quite different from the second interpretation; the third time the translator gave a third version, quite different from the former two; the man was dismissed with a remark that it is impossible that the same characters should have three different meanings on three different Sundays, and he warned the Bishop to be on his guard against such discrepancies in the so-called translations of the tablets. Mr. Croft reports destruction of many tablets at the behest of the missionaries.

    The first missionary, Brother Eugenio Eyraud was the person to report of the existence of the tablets to Bishop Jaussen. The next to make an attempt to translate the tablets was the Mohican party in December, 1886. When at Tahiti they took photographs of the Bishop's tablets and purchased the only two that remained in the island. They got hold of an old man Ure Vaciko, who was supposed to know the script. After great difficulty he was induced to interpret. "Ure Vaciko's fluent interpretation of the tablet was not interrupted though it became evident that he was not actually reading the characters. It was noticed that the shifting