ARRIVAL AT EASTER ISLAND
1722 Discovered by the Dutch Admiral Roggeveen.
1770 Visited by the Spaniards under Gonzalez.
1774 Visited by the English under Cook.
1786 Visited by the French under La Pérouse. Receives occasional
visits from passing ships.
1862 Dec. Peruvian slave-raiders carry off many inhabitants.
1864 Jan. Arrival of first missionary from Valparaiso.
1867 Commercial exploitation begins—arrival of M. Dutrou Bornier
(_cir._) from Tahiti.
1868 Visit of H.M.S. _Topaze_—removal of statues now in British
Museum.
1888 Visit of U.S.A. warship _Mohican_.
1888 Chilean Government takes possession.
1897 Mr. Merlet of Valparaiso leases the greater part of the
island, and subsequently forms a company for the
“Exploitation of Easter Island.”
_For further historical details, see below_, pp. 200–10.
Easter Island at last! It was in the misty dawn of Sunday, March 29th,
1914, that we first saw our destination, just one week in the year
earlier than the Easter Day it was sighted by Roggeveen and his company
of Dutchmen. We had been twenty days at sea since leaving Juan
Fernandez, giving a wide berth to the few dangerous rocks which
constitute Salo-y-Gomez and steering directly into the sunset. It was
thirteen months since we had left Southampton, out of which time we had
been 147 days under way, and here at last was our goal. As we approached
the southern coast we gazed in almost awed silence at the long grey mass
of land, broken into three great curves, and diversified by giant
molehills (fig. 23). The whole looked an alarmingly big land in which to
find hidden caves. The hush was broken by the despairing voice of
Bailey, the ship’s cook. “I don’t know how I am to make a fire on that
island, there is no wood!” He spoke the truth; not a vestige of timber
or even brushwood was to be seen. We swung round the western headland
with its group of islets and dropped anchor in Cook’s Bay. A few hundred
yards from the shore is the village of Hanga Roa, the native name for
Cook’s Bay. This is the only part of the island which is inhabited, the
two hundred and fifty natives, all that remain of the population,
having, been gathered together here in order to secure the safety of the
livestock, to which the rest of the island is devoted. The yacht was
soon surrounded by six or seven boat-loads of natives, clad in
nondescript European garments, but wearing a head-covering of native
straw, somewhat resembling in appearance the high hat of civilisation
(fig. 83).
The Manager, Mr. Edmunds, shortly appeared, and to our relief, for we
had not been sure how he would view such an invasion, gave us a very
kind welcome. He is English, and was, to all intent, at the time of our
arrival, the only white man on the island; a French carpenter, who lived
at Hanga Roa with a native wife, being always included in the village
community. His house is at Mataveri (fig. 25), a spot about two miles to
the south of the village, surrounded by modern plantations which are
almost the only trees on the island; immediately behind it rises the
swelling mass of the volcano Rano Kao. The first meal on Easter Island,
taken here with Mr. Edmunds, remains a lasting memory. It was a large
plain room with uncarpeted floor, scrupulously orderly; a dinner-table,
a few chairs, and two small book-cases formed the whole furniture. The
door on to the veranda was open, for the night was hot, and the roar of
breakers could be heard on the beach; while near at hand conversation
was accompanied by a never-ceasing drone of mosquitoes. The light of the
unshaded lamp was reflected from the clean rough-dried cloth of the
table round which we sat, and lit up our host’s features, the keen brown
face of a man who had lived for some thirty years or more, most of it in
the open air and under a tropical sun. He was telling us of events which
one hardly thought existed outside magazines and books of adventure, but
doing it so quietly that, with closed eyes, it might have been fancied
that the entertainment was at some London restaurant, and we were still
at the stage of discussing the latest play.
“This house,” said our host, “was built some fifty years ago by Bornier,
who was the first to exploit the island. He was murdered by the natives:
they seized the moment when he was descending from a ladder; one spoke
to him and another struck him down. They buried him on the hillock near
the cliff just outside the plantation: you will see his grave, when the
grass is not so long; it is marked by a circle of stones. A French
warship arriving almost immediately afterwards, they explained that he
had been killed by a fall from his horse, and this is the version still
given in some of the accounts of the island, but murder will always out.
After that another manager had trouble: it was over sheep-stealing.
There were three or four white men here at the time, and they all rode
down to the village to teach the natives a lesson, but the ponies turned
restive at the sound of gun-fire, and the rifles themselves were
defective, so the boot was on the other foot, and they had to retreat up
here followed by the mob; for months they lived in what was practically
a state of siege, with one man always on guard for fear of attack.
“My latest guests were a crew of shipwrecked mariners, Americans, who
landed on the island last June. A fortnight earlier the barometer here
had been extraordinarily low, but we did not get much wind; further to
the south, however, the gale was terrific, and the _El Dorado_ was in
the midst of it. The captain, who had been a whaler in his day, said
that he had never seen anything approaching it, the sea was simply a
seething mass of crested waves. The ship was a schooner, trading between
Oregon and a Chilean port; she was a long way from land, as sailing
vessels make a big semicircle to get the best wind. She had a deck load
of timber, 15 feet high, which of course shifted in such a sea; she
sprang leaks in every direction, and it was obvious that she must soon
break up. The crew took to their boat, not that they had much hope of
saving their lives, but simply because there was nothing else to be
done. They got some tins of milk and soup on board, and a box of
biscuits, and a cask holding perhaps twenty gallons of water. The
captain managed to secure his sextant, but when he went back for his
chronometers, the chart-room was too deep in water for him to be able to
reach them. They saw by the chart that the nearest land was this island:
it was seven hundred miles off, and as they had no chronometer, and
could take no risks, they would have to go north first in order to get
their latitude, which would add on another two hundred. There was
nothing for it, however, but to do the best they could; they had more
gales too, and only saved the boat from being swamped by making a
sea-anchor of their blankets. The spray of course kept washing over
them, and as the boat was only 20 feet long and there were eleven of
them, there was no room for them to lie down. Each day they had between
them a tin of the soup and one of milk, and an allowance of water, but
the sea got into the water-cask and made it brackish, and before the end
their sufferings from thirst were so great that one or two of them
attempted to drink salt water; the mate stopped that by saying that he
would shoot the first man who did it.
“After nine days they sighted this island, but then luck was against
them, for the wind changed, and it was forty-eight hours, after they saw
the coast, before they were able to beach the boat. They got on shore at
the other end of the island, which is uninhabited. They were pretty much
at the last stage of exhaustion, and their skin was in a terrible
condition with salt water; their feet especially were so bad that they
could hardly walk. One of them fell down again and again, but struggled
on saying, ‘I won’t give up, I won’t give up.’ At last my man, who looks
after the cattle over there, saw them and brought me word. The officers
were put up here, you must really forgive the limitations of my
wardrobe, for I had to give away nearly everything that I had in order
to clothe them.
“The most curious part of the whole business was that after they had
been here three or four months the captain took to the boat again. I
believe that he was buying his house at home on the instalment plan, and
that if he did not get in the last payment by the end of the year the
whole would be forfeited; anyway, as soon as the fine weather came on he
had out the boat and patched her up. He got two of his men to go with
him. I lent him a watch for navigation purposes, and we did all we could
for him in the way of food; there were no matches on the island, so he
learnt how to make fire with two pieces of wood native fashion. Anyway,
off he started last October for Mangareva, sixteen hundred miles from
here; he must have got there safely, for you brought me an answer to a
letter that I gave him to post.[11] But,” and here for the first time
the eyes of our host grew animated, and he raised his voice slightly,
“it is maddening to think of that cargo drifting about in the Pacific. I
do trust that next time a ship breaks up with a deck-load of timber, she
will have at least the commonsense to do so near Easter Island.” Then,
after a pause, “I wish you no ill, but the yacht would make a splendid
wreck.”
We kept _Mana_ for nearly two months while learning our new
surroundings. Not only were we anxious to find if we had the necessary
camp gear and stores, but we were engaged in agonised endeavours to
foresee the details of excavation and research, in case essential tools
or equipment had been forgotten, which the yacht could fetch from Chile.
The time, however, arrived when she must go. Mr. Ritchie was now on
shore with us for survey work, but as his service with the Expedition
was limited, the vessel had to return in time to take him back to
civilisation by the correct date. Mr. Gillam had from this time sole
charge of the navigation of _Mana_. Instructions for him had to be
written, and correspondence grappled with; business letters, epistles
for friends, and reports to Societies were hurriedly dealt with; and an
article which had been promised to the _Spectator_, “First Impressions
of Easter Island,” was written in my tent, by the light of a
hurricane-lamp, during the small hours of more than one morning.
When the mail-bag was finally sealed, there was great difficulty in
getting hold of _Mana_. The position of a skipper of a boat off Easter
Island, unless she has strong steam power, is not a happy one. Mr.
Gillam used to lie in his berth at Cook’s Bay hearing the waves break on
the jagged reaches of lava, and the longer he listened the less he liked
it. The instant that the wind shows signs of going to the west, a ship
must clear out. It is reported that on one occasion there were some
anxious moments on board: a sudden change of wind and tide were setting
the yacht steadily on the rocks; the engineer was below in the
engine-room, and Mr. Gillam shouted to him down the hatchway, “If you
can’t make that motor of yours go round in three minutes, you will know
whether there is a God or not.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 25.
MANAGER’S HOUSE, MATAVERI.
Supported by foundation-stones of old native houses.
]
To get in touch with the yacht was like a game of hide-and-seek, for
often by the time those on shore arrived at one side of the island, the
wind had shifted, and she had run round to the other. She was on the
north coast when we managed to catch her, and to get back to Mataveri
necessitated retracing our steps, as will be seen from the map, over the
high central ground of the island, and down on the other side; the track
was rough, and the ride would ordinarily take from two to three hours.
It was 4 p.m. before all work was done on board, the good-byes said, and
we were put on shore; the sandy cove, the horses and men, with _Mana_ in
the offing, formed a delightful picture in the evening light, but there
the charms of the situation ended. There was only one pack-horse, and a
formidable body of last collections sat looking at us in a pile on the
grass. In addition we had not, in the general pressure, sufficiently
taken into account that we were bringing off the engineer, now to be
turned into photographer; there he was, and not he alone but his goods
and bedding. The sun set at five o’clock, and it would be dark at
half-past five; it seemed hopeless to get back that night.
A neighbouring cave was first investigated as a possible abiding-place,
but proved full of undesirable inhabitants, so everyone set to work and
the amount stowed on that wretched pack-horse was wonderful. Then each
attendant was slung round with some remaining object, S. took the
additional member on his pony, and off we set. Before we got to the
highest point all daylight had gone, and there was only just enough
starlight to keep to the narrow track by each man following a dim vision
of the one immediately in front. My own beast had been chosen as “so
safe” that it was most difficult to keep him up with the others, let
alone on his four legs. The pack-horse, too, began pointing out that he
was not enjoying the journey; the load was readjusted more than once,
but when we were on the down grade again he came to a full stop and we
all dismounted. There in the creepy darkness we had a most weird picnic;
not far off was a burial-place, with a row of fallen statues, while the
only light save that of the stars was the striking of an occasional
match. S. produced a tin of meat, which he had brought from the yacht,
and which was most acceptable, as he and I had had no substantial food,
save a divided tin of sardines, since breakfast at 7 o’clock. He shared
it out between the party amid cries from our retainers of “Good food,
good Pappa,” for we were, as in East Africa, known as “Pappa” and
“Mam-ma” to a large and promising family. By some inducement the
pack-horse was then deluded into proceeding, and we finally reached
Mataveri at nine o’clock, relieved to find we had not been given up and
that supper awaited us. So did we cut our last link with civilisation,
and were left in mid-Pacific with statues and natives.
The next part of this story deals with the island, the conditions of
life on it, and our experience during the sixteen months we were to
spend there. Such scientific work as the Expedition was able to
accomplish will be recounted later.