As a first step in the search the scientist naturally turns to the most ancient accounts which he can find describing the island, its inhabitants, and remains; these are not yet two hundred years old. The first European to see it was a Dutch Admiral named Roggeveen, who came upon it on Easter Day, 1722, during his search for another and mysterious island known as Davis or David’s Island.[25] He concluded that it was not the place for which he was looking, christened it Easter Island, and went further afield. His ship lay off the north side of the island for a week, but only on one day did landing take place, and one or two of the party have left us short descriptions. There were, they say, no big trees, but it had a rich soil and good climate; there were sugar-cane, bananas, potatoes and figs, and the natives brought them a number of fowls, estimated varyingly from sixty to five hundred. One of the voyagers goes so far as to say that “all the country was under cultivation.” As for the inhabitants, they were, they tell us, of all shades of colour, yellow, white, and brown, and wore clothes made of a “field product,” evidently tapa. They were “painted,” which apparently signifies tattooed, and it was the habit to distend the lobes of their ears so that they hung to the shoulders, and large discs were worn in them. “When these Indians,” wrote Roggeveen, “go about any job which might set their ear-plugs wagging, and bid fair to do them any hurt, they take them out and hitch the rim of the lobe up over the top of the ear, which gives them a quaint and laughable appearance.”[26]