The
Nearest Calculation We Could Make, Never Brought The Number Of
Inhabitants In This Island Beyond Seven Hundred, Who, Destitute Of
Tools, Of Shelter And Clothing, Are Obliged To Spend All Their Time In
Providing Food To Support Their Precarious Existence.
It is obvious
that they are too much occupied with their wants, to think of forming
statues, which would cost them ages to finish, and require their
united strength to erect.
Accordingly, we did not see a single
instrument among them in all our excursions, which could have been of
the least use in masonry or sculpture. We neither met with any
quarries, where they had recently dug the materials, nor with
unfinished statues, which we might have considered as the work of the
present race. It is therefore probable, that these people were
formerly more numerous, more opulent and happy, when they could spare
sufficient time, to flatter the vanity of their princes, by
perpetuating their names by lasting monuments. The remains of
plantations found on the summits of the hub, give strength and support
to this conjecture. It is not in our power to determine by what
various accidents a nation so flourishing, could be reduced in number,
and degraded to its present indigence. But we are well convinced that
many causes may produce this effect, and that the devastation which a
volcano might make, is alone sufficient to heap a load of miseries on
a people confined to so small a space. In fact, this island, which may
perhaps, in remote ages, have been produced by a volcano, since all
its minerals are merely volcanic, has at least in all likelihood been
destroyed by its fire. All kinds of trees and plants, all-domestic
animals, nay a great part of the nation itself, may have perished in
the dreadful convulsion of nature: Hunger and misery must have been
but too powerful enemies to those who escaped the fire. We cannot well
account for these little carved images which we saw among the natives,
and the representation of a dancing woman's hand, which are made of a
kind of wood at present not to be met with upon the island. The only
idea which offers itself is, that they were made long ago, and have
been saved by accident or predilection, at the general catastrophe
which seems to have happened. In numberless circumstances the people
agree with the tribes who inhabit New Zealand, the Friendly and the
Society Islands, and who seem to have had one common origin with them.
Their features are very similar, so that the general character may
easily be distinguished. Their colour a yellowish brown, most like the
hue of the New Zealanders; their art of puncturing, the use of the
mulberry-bark for clothing, the predilection for red paint and red
dresses, the shape and workmanship of their clubs, the mode of
dressing their victuals, all form a strong resemblance to the natives
of these islands. We may add, the simplicity of their languages, that
of Easter Island being a dialect, which, in many respects, resembles
that of New Zealand, especially in the harshness of pronunciation and
the use of gutturals, and yet, in other instances, partakes of that of
Otaheite.
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