EASTER ISLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18217, 10 October 1922, Page 4

EASTER ISLAND.

TOWARD THE SOLUTION. A LOST ARCHIPELAGO. BY J. MACMTIXAN BROWN, IX-D. In the story of the arrival of Hotu Matua there is a significant incident. He had left his realm away to the northwest of Easter Island 120 days before; and the King of that archipelago.. Haumaka, having had a dream of the solitary islet in the ocean on which the voyager ■ had to land and the bay on its coasts where he was to beach his canoes, sent six fuglemen before to prospect the island. These getting first to th© island, Motunui at the south-west point landed and climbed Eano Kao and planted their yam cuttings down by the lake in the crater. They then coasted round and came upon the whito shelly beach of Anakena Bay, answering the description of the royal dream. Returning to the south-west point, Ira found his yams all smothered with grass, and made for the islet of Motunui. As he slept Hotu Matua arrived and tied up his canoes; and the rest of the fuglemen came in time next morning to hear Ira warn the voyager that the land was barren; the voyager replied that he meant to cultivate it. The last comers chided Ira for giving such a poor account of the island, but added that they were on their way to the old archipelago, Marao Renga and Marae Toiho, whence they had all started. The far voyager had evidently been to see what there was of it and warned them that the sea bad come up and drowned all the inhabitants. In other words there had gone down a great archipelago to the north-west in the four months since h<3 had set out. The first word of t!ie names of tho two islands, marae, means temple, and it is not improbable, from his after legislation, that he had beioi high priest as well as ruler in one or both of them. Davis Land Vanished to the East. And when he landed in Anakena Bay on the east coast, he called the new island Te Pito te Henua, which means in Faster Island dialect, " The Navel of the World." It is the only native name that Easter Island has borne through all time, and implies that there were much greater landg all round. Now Davis, the buccaneer, and his second in command, Wafer, in " The Bachelor's Delight," came across in the latitude of Easter Island in 1686 a low sandy island off which they stood till morning; but away twelve leagues off to the north-west there stretched a long high land partitioned off into what seemed islands. Walter, in his published account, gives it a length of about twelve leagues. Davis told Dampier that it stretched away to the north-west across the horizon. Wafer and the crew wished to go and visit it; Davis refused. In 1722 the Dutchman searched in vain for Davis Land, and 1 found Easter Island. So Gonzalez, the Spanish voyager, in 1771 tried to find Davis Land and failed. Since then a controversy has been going on as to whether Davis Land was Easter Island. It was only fifteen hundred miles from the American coast, and Easter Island is two thousand miles. Beechey argues that it was Easter Island Davis discovered, because a current would carry him several hundred miles to the east. But neither is the low sandy island they stood off, nor is the far-stretching archipelago they saw in the distance, Easter Island. One thing is certain that both had gone down between 1686 and 1722 if we are to accept the report of the eyewitnesses, Davis and Wafer, as we must. Makemake the Oiofttor. It is not unlikely that Sala-y-Gomez, a rocky islet nearly 300 miles to the east of Easter Island, is the last remnant of the sunken archipelago, and it is known to Easter islanders by the name of Motu Matiro Hiva; and from it their great god Makemake came, bringing the seabiirds and the nets; he was the protector of both seabirds and fish, and his representation which appears carved on the rocks at Orongo, and also very frequently as a character in the script, is made up of the head of a frigate-bird, the tail ot a shark, and the body of a sea-mammal, a man-eating monster called by the Easter islanders niuhi. and greatly feared by them. Its long flippers often develop into human arms, as the forkings of the fish tail pass into outstretched human legs. It is evident that this was a product of the archipelago to the east that had gone down, probably reprefcnting the warrior who unified it into an empire, and was apotheosised. He was the god of Hotu Matua and his sacred clan, the Miru, which means that this great pioneer of Easter Island was one of the ruling class or ruling dynasty of Motn Matiro Hiva, and that when he found his own archipelago, Marao Renga, away to the north-west and the fatherland of tho empire away to the east gone down, ho had to make the best of it in this barren little island with the young trees and cuttings and seeds that he had brought from abroad in his two great canoes. One version of the story makes him comp from the east to Easter Island; both directions are manifestly right; he would return to Mirae Renga first, and, finding it gone down, he would make for the eastern archipelago, whence he drew his authority ; and finding it had vanished too, he had no other alternative but to do his best with Easter Island. Evidence o! Submergence. This gives full meaning to the name " The Navel of the World "; it was the centre of the world that these Polynesians away down in the South-east Pacific knew. It lies at the end of the great insular arc that stretches from north-west to south-east across tho Pacific through the Mariannes, Carolines, Marshall, Gilberts, Ellice Islands, Samoan, Society, and Paumotu groups, an arc in which the dominant movement has always been subsidence, while in the south-west arc of the Pacific elevation has dominated. Away in the north-west we cannot well account for the existence of a syllabic script in the little islets of Uleai and Faraulep without assuming the submergence of an archipelagic empire that needed it. Nor can we explain the existence of tho great cyclopean Venice on the Eouth-east reef of Ponape without assuming at least 50 times the present population in tho islands around. So the strict law that governs the relationships of the Polynesian dialects, some of which are now 5000 miles apart, cannot be explained unless thoy at one time faced each other under an organised government; that must have been in the traditional fatherland, Hawaiki, which has presumably gone down, as the spirits of dead Polynesians dive into the sea to get to it; and this was doubtless in this arc of, subsidence in east central Polynesia. Subsidence in Human Times. And if Darwin's and Dana's theory of the coral islands of the Pacific is to bo acceptod as it must be if we accept the indications of the Funafuti boring and the dolomitic character of its core, showinc that the 1200 ft. of coral was laid in shallow water, then the Marshalls. the Gilbert and Ellice groups and the Paumotus are all evidence of vast subsidence in this central aro of the Pacific. Of actual subsidence in human times there is clear evidance. The phosphate islands, Makatea in the north-west of the Panmotus, and Ocean Island and Nauru in the west of the Gilberts must have gone down and come uip several times if we are to account for the phosphatic depth on them, the residium of the seabirds' guano after the filtration of its nitrates by sea water. And before one subsidence Ocean Island was occupied .by Polynesians; for deep in the phosphates were found round volcanic stnms which must have come from at least 600 miles away; they were used in the earth oven, for they have the marks of fire upon them. And to the south-west of Mangaia in the Cook group, a coral atoll, called Tuanaki, went down vtfth all its inhabitants in the late 'thirties of last century; they were waiting for a missionary, and when the missionary sohooner went to visit it, it had vanished.

Geologists are now inclined to assume a hypothetical Pacific continent which began to founder at the end of the -secondary period; either this or a vast line of archipelagoes all connected up with one another at one period or another has to be assumed to account for the likeness and in some cases indentity between tho flora and fauna of the Hawaiian islands and those of the south-west Pacific. Durtre tertiary period the pleistocene and t' o existing geological period the Pacific Ovist of South America with the Andes hts been in process of rising out of the depths; it is still on the rise. And where there has been great elevation in the crust of the earth there must be compensatory subsidence somewhere IB the neighbourhood. The rise of the Andes would help to account for the greatest stretch of landless ocean on the face of the earth, the Southern Pacific. Nor are wo without evidence of considerable submergences in the eastern section of it. In 1576 Juan Fernandez, the Spanish pilot, wished to sail from Callao to Valparaiso, and .in order to avoid the wind that blows all the year along the coast from tho south and the Humboldt current that takes the same direction, he shot away out to the south-west, and ut the end of a month he came across a great land with "the mouths of very largo rivers and peopled with well-clad white inhabitants." He died before he could communicate with Spain or tatce advantage of his discovery. We have now facts to go upon that will help to solve some of the problems of Easter Island. The name -the navel of the world" indicates that Easter Island was ringed round with archipelagoes, which have one after me other gone down and left it a solitary islet in a waste of waters. These archipelagoes were evidently linked up into one empire under that away to the east, Motu Matiro Hiva. Else this little navel could not have been peacefully appropriated as a mausoleum for all. And this archipelagic ring gives a new meaning to the ring of burial platforms along the whole coast of Easter Island; pemaps tho various coasts were each set apart for the archipelago opposite to it; if so it would not be too rash to conclude that the archipelago to the east had begun the platforms first, or was the most populous, or was tho dominant member of the empire; for there the ahus aro the most continuous; and next to it in importance would be the archipelagoes to the south; for on tho south coast some of the platforms are of the finest, and they extend from east to west in an almost unbroken line. That thero was one central power is manifest in the plan and organisation of the whole island; without one dominant authority there would not have been the order that is apparent everywhere; instead there would have been the state of internecine w.irfare that is manifest in all the ages after Hotu Matua spread tho people out into clans all along the coasts. Ana it is also manifest tbati that dominant authority was situated in Motu Matiro Hiva, the archipelago away to the east, for from this came Makemake, the god of Hotu Matua and of the sacred clan, the Miru, and ultimately the supreme god of tho island.