of position did not accord with the number of symbols on the lines and afterwards when the photograph of another tablet was substituted the same story continued without change being discovered; nor could he give the signification of hieroglyphs copied indiscriminately from tablets already marked; he explained at great length that the actual value and significance of the symbols had been forgotten, but the tablets were recognized by unmistakable features, just as a person might recognize a book in a foreign language and be perfectly sure of the contents without being able to actually read it."

    It is by no means improbable that the genealogies, songs, and hymns given were really what the tablets stood for; for at the annual feast the people were taught to recognize each tablet as they recited or heard recited what it contained, and in 1886 the old language had been mutilated and filled with words from Tahiti and Mangareva.

    Every year the Pioneer called all the Maoris of the island together with their newly cut copies of old tablets on boards, planks of old canoes, to inspect them and hear them recite the traditions, genealogies, and prayers they were supposed to represent. This annual feast went on till the Peruvians carried most of the residents away. The Pioneer made the tablets the sacred book of their religion; and when the professional reciters were carried away, we have the authority of Brother Eyraud, who spent nine months on the island, that they were little esteemed by the people. It is a tradition that after a fight a warrior would go to a Maori and ask him to record the number of men he had slain. The names, etc. of the kings have not been engraved in the script on the burial platforms or on the statues, and this seems to imply that the script was a priestly secret only to be used for religious purposes, only by priests in their ceremonies. Each character was probably an aid to memory giving the cue to some sentence or idea, or lengthy prayer, hymn, or incantation. This is probably the explanation of the constant repetition of the figure Makemake; the whole religion is centred round the supreme god; and his form stirred religious emotions rather than ideas; the script is pathographic rather than ideographic.