HAVE FORMED A LARGE PORTION OF THE
MATERIAL FOR THIS BOOK, BUT WHO
WAS NO LONGER HERE TO
WELCOME OUR RETURN
PREFACE
As I sit down to write this preface there rises before me, not the other side of this London street, but the beautiful view over the harbour of St. Vincent, Cape Verde Islands, as seen from the British Consulate. It was a hot afternoon, but in that shady room I had found a fellow-woman and sympathetic listener. To her I had been recounting, rather mercilessly as it seemed, the story of our experiences in the yacht, including the drowning of the tea in Las Palmas Harbour. When I had finished, she said quietly, “You are going to publish all this I suppose?” I hesitated, for the idea was new. “No,” I replied, “we had not thought of doing so; of course, if we have any success at Easter Island we shall make it known, but this is all in the day’s work.” “I think,” she said, “that there are many who lead quiet stay-at-home lives who would be interested.” Times have changed since 1913, there are now few who have not had adventures, either in their own persons, or through those dear to them, compared with which ours were but pleasant play; but I still find that many of those who are good enough to care to hear what we did in those three years ask for personal details. After a lecture given to a learned society, which it had been an honour to be asked to address, I was accosted by a lady, invited for the occasion, with the remark, “I was disappointed in what you told us. You never said what you had to eat.” This, and many similar experiences, are the apology for the trivialities of this work.
No attempt has been made to write any sort of a guide book to the varied places touched at by the yacht, neither space nor knowledge permitted; all that has been done either by pen or pencil is to try to give the main impression left on the mind of a passing dweller in their harbours and anchorages. It has, however, been found by experience that, in accounts of travel, the general reader loses much of the pleasure which has been experienced by the writer, through knowledge being assumed of the history of the places visited; a knowledge which the traveller himself has absorbed almost unconsciously. Without some acquaintance with past events the present cannot be understood; at the risk, therefore, of interrupting the narrative, a few notes of such history have been included.
In dealing with the main topic of the work, an endeavour has been made to give some idea of the problem of Easter Island as the Expedition found it, and also of its work there. With regard to this part, some appeal is necessary to the understanding kindness of the reader, for it has not been an easy tale to tell, nor one which could be straightforwardly recounted. The story of Easter is as yet a tangled skein. The dim past, to which the megalithic works bear witness—the island as the early voyagers found it—its more recent history and present state, all of these are intermingled threads, none of which can be followed without reference to the remaining clues.
For those who would have preferred more scientific and fewer personal details, I can only humbly say wait, there is another volume in prospect with descriptions and dimensions of some two hundred and sixty burial-places on the island, thousands of measurements of statues, and other really absorbing matter. The numerical statements in the present book, dealing with archæological remains, must be considered approximate till it has been possible to go again through the large collection of notes.
It is fairly obvious why the writing of this story has fallen to the share of the sole feminine member of the Expedition. I had also, what was, in spite of all things, the good fortune to be fourteen weeks longer on the island than my husband. They were fat weeks too, when the first lean ones, with their inevitable difficulties, were past; and the unsettlement towards the end had not arrived. He has, I need hardly say, given me every assistance with this work. Generally speaking, all things which it is possible to touch and handle, buildings, weapons, and ornaments, were in his department; while things of a less tangible description, such as religion, history, and folk lore fell to my lot. Those who know him will recognise his touches throughout, and the account of the last part of the voyage, after my return to England, has been written by him.