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Easter Island: Early Witnesses
William Thomson
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light casting-nets were used with great dexterity as they waded along the beach, and when a shoal of small fish appeared, the net was thrown with the right hand. These nets were remarkably made, and in the manufacture a netting-needle of bone or wood was used, much after the fashion in more civilized countries. The coarse nets and cordage was made from the twisted bark of the hibiscus, and the fine ones from the fiber of the indigenous hemp. From the strong heavy ropes used in raising and transporting the colossal images to the light but durable fish-lines, the threads were all twisted by hand, across the knee, into even strands, which were multiplied according to the size and strength required.
NATIVES.
The population of Easter Island is not stated in actual figures by any of the traditions or legends, but all agree in the statement that the different districts were peopled by numerous and powerful clans who were constantly at war with each other. The immense amount of work performed by the image-makers and platform-builders would indicate the employment of a great many persons, if accomplished within a reasonable limit of time, or the extension over several centuries, if the undertaking was carried out by successive generations. The ruins of extensive settlements near Tahai Bay Kotatake plains, around Puka Manga-Manga mountain, the Rana-Hana-Kana coast, the vicinity of Anakena, the shores of La Pérouse Bay, and extending along the coast from Tongariki to Vinapu in an almost unbroken line, would prove either the presence of numerous inhabitants, or a frequent change of location. The limited area of the 32 square miles of surface available for cultivation precludes the idea of any very dense population, and many reasons might be assigned for a frequent change of habitation. We know that the stone houses at Orango were only occupied during the feast of "bird eggs." The image-builders engaged in the quarries of Rana Roraka probably lived at Tongariki, and entire communities may have changed location at different seasons of the year from failure of water supply, or some equally sufficient reason.
The early Spanish voyagers estimated the population at between 2,000 and 3,000. Admiral Roggeveen states that he was surrounded by several thousand natives before he opened fire upon them. Captain Cook, fifty-two years later, placed the number at between 600 and 700, and Foster, who was with him, estimated them at 900. Twelve Years later (1786) La Pérouse placed the population at 2,000. Bushey (1825) puts the number at about 1,500. Kotzebue and Lisiansky make more liberal estimates. Equally chimerical and irreconcilable deductions are made by recent writers. Mr. A. A. Salmon, after many years' residence on the island, estimates the population between 1850 and 1860 at nearly 20,000. The diminution of the actual number of inhabitants progressed rapidly from 1863, when the majority of the able-bodied men were kidnaped by the Peruvians, and carried away to work in the guano deposits of the Chincha Islands, and plantations in Peru. Only
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