The prominence given to the conventionalized VULVA amongst the characters was the source of the fertilizing power that the natives believed belonged to the tablets; it is repeated over and over again and stood for numerous different forms of emotions connected with procreation and fecundity; this was the reason why it was tattooed on the virgin to certify that she was marriageable, and on the hands of men to show that they were producers. The tablets like the king's skull were cherished as stimulatons of fertility, and that was why so many of them were found in every hut. At every feast the recitation was essential as the feasters longed for increase in the produce of land and sea. The idea of reproduction was never out of the minds of the people where starvation always stared them in the face. The great pioneer would have failed to make the tablets instruments of religion and power had it not been impregnated with the passion of procreation.

    In 1886 the Mohican party visited the island for scientific purposes. They saw so many of the giant statues fallen down from burial platforms, so many images roughly carved out, and some even ready for launching; the workmen's tools were lying by where they had thrown them; the party came to the conclusion that this meant the sudden hand of nature. But as stated above there is no sign of volcanic outburst on the island; why the artists did not return to their work after the upheaval is a problem. The submergence of the larger part of the island is assumed. In native language the name of the island meant "the navel or centre of the world." Tradition, legend, and observations of modern sailors combine to indicate Easter island as the centre of an archipelagic world that surrounded it at various distances. One of these to the west was distinguished as being a land of temples, probably cyclopean like the maraes of Rarotonga and Marquesas. Another to the east stretched from the south-east away to the north-west beyond the horizon, probably right across the tropics; and it was marked by lofty mountains, which probably with the rains from the tropics bore great forests and sheltered in the valleys rich gardens and cultivation. In this perhaps, writes Dr. Brown in his The Riddle of the Pacific we have a solution of the mystery of Easter island.