SOUTHTERN PACIFIC SECRETS.

Press, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14400, 6 July 1912, Page 2

SOUTHTERN PACIFIC SECRETS.

■-. —: :♦- EXPEDITION TO EASTER ISLAND.

(KItOM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT). LONDON. June 1. Mr W. Scoresby Routlcdge, M.A., is heading a British ■ expedition to Easter Island, with tho object of investigating the meaning and origin of tho gigantic prehistoric remains on the island. The expedition is to travel in a speciallvconst'r.ucted vessel, which has just been launched at Wliitstablo, arid named theMana—Polynesian for "good luck." The Mana is a 250-ton motor auxiliary yacht, and • she -will cai'ry, in addition to Mr Routledgc, a geologist,-a scientist connected with tho British Museum, rind .a.navigating.officer with a crew of fourteen. Sho will sail at the'beginning, of August. Immense platforms, formed of stones fitted together with cement, havo been wetted -on the island facing the sea; Some of the -.stones' weigh five tons, and in places these mysterious sea walls are 301b high and 200 ft long. On the laud side'of- thesa platforms there are broad terraces,-also of stone, bearing tho ptKiestals on which stood huge figures carved out of lava • from an extinct orator eight miles away; xVlost oi those images havo been thrown down, but theio aro 555 of them in tho forty-live square miles of the island. The'figures extend down'to-the hips, and the laces represent a receding iorehead, a broad, uazo-like notjo, thin lips, and a powerful chin. One of the anialler statues of .Easter Island-r-Sffc high—is now in the British Museum, having been brought back by H.M.S. Topaze,' which visited the Island in 1868.

, No metal is found in tho island, and tho only ancient tool found is a stone chisel, with which it would have been impossible to execute such colossal works. To drag the statues from the crater-workshop over hill and dale to tho platforms 'must havo required a far larger population than this island (with very scanty supplies of fresh water) could-.'support. Some, of the colossi weigh 250 tons, and it would heed modern, engineering appliances to movo somo of them.

There is ample evidence that the making of these huge images was suddenly stopped, and the theory has been advanced that the island is tho last pinnacle of a submerged continent which''occupied'the greater part of the South Pacific, and possibly joined Asia with America. Ruined temples of the same style are found on the mainland of America, in Indo-China," and Java. Under the platforms are vast numbers of skeletons. Originally, it may bo presumed, they were the victims of human sacrifices, but in modern times the Kanaka inhabitants, although Chris, tianised by the Jesuits, have continued to bury their dead in these sacred nlaces. Mr Routledge's expedition will find a great fi«?ld for excavation in this mystery island of tho Southern Pacific, arid the revelation of its secret may solve the whole mystery.of the Incas of Peru.