Mr. Edmunds assured us, with amused sympathy, that his initial experiences and disillusionment had been precisely similar to our own. The natives themselves, nevertheless, continue to hunt with undiminished zeal for these hidden articles, whose value is well known; it is the one form of work which they enjoy. Rumour had come from Tahiti, shortly before we reached the island, that articles were hidden in a recess in the coast not far from the Cannibal Cave; the whole place was dug over and ransacked by treasure-hunters from the village, without result so far as we ever heard. Caves were frequently used as places of burial. Generally, as in the case of Ko Tori, an isolated corpse was placed in a grotto, but on Motu Nui we came across two subterranean chambers which had been definitely prepared as vaults. One of these had obviously not been visited for some time, as a considerable amount of clearance had to be effected before it could be reached. The entrance proved to be a small, properly constructed doorway, two feet high and eleven inches in width, from which a short passage descended at a sharp angle. To wriggle down this narrow way felt much like a rabbit going into a burrow. The cave below proved to be a circular vault, under ten feet in diameter. Four corpses lay side by side on the floor, while a fifth had been hurriedly shoved in, head foremost, through the doorway above. The ceiling and walls were artificially made and covered with white pigment. On the walls were three heads, carved in relief, the only ones encountered; they were adorned with touches of red paint. The one which was best wrought was twenty inches in length, and projected some two to three inches from the surface of the wall; it had a pronounced “imperial.” The sides of the cave were also adorned with incised drawings of birds. In order to copy these carvings by the light of a small candle, it was necessary to encamp among the damp mould of the floor in contact with the remains of the dead. The proceeding felt not a little gruesome, even to a now hardened anthropologist, and the return to daylight was very welcome. The other cave on the islet was very similar, but smaller in size, and the carvings were not so good. The corpses which it contained had evidently been buried in tapa. No information of special interest was forthcoming to account for these burials on Motu Nui; if they were associated with any particular family or class the fact has been forgotten.