The mystery of Easter island: the story of an expeditionRoutledge, Katherine
History
The mystery of Easter island: the story of an expedition
Routledge, Katherine
Easter Island; Oceania -- Description and travel; Voyages and travels
Not far from the cove there were traces of a small frame house, and near
it flourished European wheat and grass, which had obviously taken root
from stray seed. Its history was difficult to guess. Why had a white man
lived there, and on what had he subsisted? The only solution suggested
was that it might at one time have been a port of call for a line of
steamers, and a woodman had been employed to cut fuel. Another dwelling,
but made of material found on the spot, had obviously been destroyed by
fire, and on its abandoned site native wigwams had been erected. The
place was evidently the resort of Indians; when, therefore, we noted
near the old track, and not far from the water-course, part of two rough
boards protruding from the earth, we hoped that we had chanced on an
Indian burial-ground, which would naturally have been of much
anthropological interest. The soil which had originally covered the
boards had been partially washed away by the rain, and on moving them we
found, as had been guessed, that just below were human bones; they were
so deeply encrusted with roots and earth that it was only by much
digging with our fingers we could get them out at all. Then they proved
to be in much confusion, two parts of the skull even were in different
places, and it was difficult at first to say whether the body, which was
that of a man in middle life, had been buried full length or in the
folded attitude so common among primitive peoples. It was my first
experience in scientific body-snatching, a proceeding to which later I
became fairly well inured, and it felt not a little weird being thus in
contact with the dead in his lonely resting-place. A great tree-fern
kept guard over the grave on one side, a gnarled trunk bent over it from
the other, and the sun gleamed at intervals through the thick branches
of surrounding cedars. At last it became obvious that the body had been
outstretched, and the grave lined as well as covered with boards, in
addition to which there had been a wrapping of some woven material; it
seemed therefore evident that the corpse had been that of a civilised
man. Who was he? the lumberman, the remains of whose hut we had seen?
one of the crew of some vessel which had put in here? or possibly a
shipwrecked mariner? for there were traces of an ill-fated vessel in a
quantity of coal washed up on the beach. Why, though he had been buried
with considerable care, was the grave so shallow, and why had it been
left unmarked? We buried him again reverently, and though he was very
possibly an unpleasant person when alive, the thoughts of one of us at
least, who is naturally mid-Victorian, turned to the mother who had once
borne and tended him somewhere and who could so little have pictured
where he would lie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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