FIG. 46.
RANO RARAKU FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.
Images prostrate in foreground and erect on slope; quarries above.
FIG. 47.
RANO RARAKU, INTERIOR OF CRATER.
Diagrammatic sketch showing position of statues on slope and in quarry.
CHAPTER XIV
PREHISTORIC REMAINS (continued)
STATUES AND CROWNS
Rano Raraku, its Quarries and Standing Statues—the South-east Face of the Mountain—Isolated Statues—Roads—Stone Crowns of the Images.
Strange as it may appear, it is by no means easy to obtain a complete view of a statue on the island: most of the images which were formerly on the ahu lie on their faces, many are broken, and detail has largely been destroyed by weather. Happily, we are not dependent for our knowledge of the images on such information as we can gather from the ruins on the ahu, but are able to trace them to their origin, though even here excavation is necessary to see the entire figure. Rano Raraku is, as has already been explained, a volcanic cone containing a crater lake. It resembles, to use an unromantic simile, one of the china drinking-vessels dedicated to the use of dogs, whose base is larger than their brim. Its sides are for the most part smooth and sloping, and several carriages could drive abreast on the northern rim of the crater, but towards the south-east it rises in height, and from this aspect it looks as if the circular mass had been sliced down with a giant knife forming it into a precipitous cliff. The cliff is lowest where the imaginary knife has come nearest to the central lake, thus causing the two ends to stand out as the peaks already mentioned (fig. 45).
The mountain is composed of compressed volcanic ash, which has been found in certain places to be particularly suitable for quarrying; it has been worked on the southern exterior slope, and also inside the crater both on the south and south-eastern sides. With perhaps a dozen exceptions, the whole of the images in the island have been made from it, and they have been dragged from this point up hill and down dale to adorn the terraces round the coast-line of the island; even the images on the ahu, which have fallen into the sea on the further extremity of the western volcano, are said to have been of the same stone. It is conspicuous in being a reddish brown colour, of which the smallest chips can be easily recognised. It is composite in character, and embedded in the ash are numerous lapilli of metamorphic rock. Owing to the nature of this rock the earliest European visitors came to the conclusion that the material was factitious and that the statues were built of clay and stones; it was curious to find that the marooned prisoners of war of our own time fell into the same mistake of thinking that the figures were “made up.”
The workable belt, generally speaking, forms a horizontal section about half-way up the side of the mountain. Below it, both on the exterior and within the crater, are banks of detritus, and on these statues have been set up; most of them are still in place, but they have been buried in greater or less degree by the descent of earth from above (fig. 57). Mr. Ritchie made a survey of the mountain with the adjacent coast, but it was found impossible to record the results of our work without some sort of plan or diagram which was large enough to show every individual image. This was accomplished by first studying each quarry, note-book in hand, and then, with the aid of field glasses, amalgamating the results from below; the standing statues being inserted in their relation to the quarries above. It was a lengthy but enjoyable undertaking. Part of the diagram of the exterior has been redrawn with the help of photographs (fig. 60); the plan of the inside of the crater is shown in what is practically its original form (fig. 47).
Quarries of Rano Raraku.—Leaving on one side for the moment the figures on the lower slope, let us in imagination scramble up the grassy side, a steep climb of some one or two hundred feet to where the rock has been hewn away into a series of chambers and ledges. Here images lie by the score in all stages of evolution, just as they were left when, for some unknown reason, the workmen laid down their tools for the last time and the busy scene was still. Here, as elsewhere, the wonder of the place can only be appreciated as the eye becomes trained to see. In the majority of cases the statues still form part of the rock, and are frequently covered with lichen or overgrown with grass and ferns; and even in the illustrations, for which prominent figures have naturally been chosen, the reader may find that he has to look more than once in order to recognise the form. A conspicuous one first strikes the beholder: as he gazes, he finds with surprise that the walls on either hand are themselves being wrought into figures, and that, resting in a niche above him, is another giant; he looks down, and realises with a start that his foot is resting on a mighty face. To the end of our visit we occasionally found a figure which had escaped observation.
