FIG. 75.
AN IMAGE ON ITS BACK.
Unbroken; if erect, would face westwards.
FIG. 76.
AN IMAGE ON ITS FACE.
Showing by cleavage and only partial fall that it has been erect and faced westwards.
The third road, which runs from Raraku in a northerly direction, is much shorter than those to the south and west. It has only four statues covering a distance of perhaps a mile, and it then disappears; if, however, the figures round the base of the mountain belonged to it, and they lie in the same direction, it started from the southern corner of the mountain, led in front of the standing statues and across the trail from the crater, before taking its northward route up the eastern plain. The furthest of the images is the largest which has been moved; it lies on its back, badly broken, but the total of the fragments gives a height of thirty-six feet four inches. In addition to these three avenues, there are indications that some of the statues on the south-eastern side of Raraku may have been on a fourth road along that side beneath the cliff.
So far the matter was sufficiently clear, but another problem was still unsolved: if the images were really being moved to their respective ahu all round the coast, how was it that, with very few exceptions, they were all found in the neighbourhood of Raraku? If also they were being moved, what was the method pursued, for some lay on their backs and some on their faces? With the hope of elucidating this great question of the means of transport, we dug under and near one or two of the single figures without achieving our end—nothing was found; but the close study which the work necessitated called attention to the fact that on one of them the lines of weathering could not have been made with the figure in its present horizontal attitude. The rain had evidently collected on the head and run down the back; it must therefore have stood for a considerable time in a vertical position. It was again a noticeable fact that, though some single figures are lying unbroken (fig. 75), others, like the large one on the north road, proved to be so shattered that no amount of normal disintegration or shifting of soil could account for their condition—they had obviously fallen. So wedded, however, were we at this time to the theory that they were in course of transport, that it was seriously considered whether they could have been moved in an upright position. The point was settled by finding one day by the side of the track, some two miles from the mountain, a partially buried head. This was excavated, and a statue found that had been originally set up in a hole and, later, undermined, causing it to fall forward. This was the only instance of an isolated figure where the burial had been to any depth, but in various other cases it was then seen that soil had been removed from the base, and one or two more of the figures had not quite fallen (fig. 76).
FIG. 77.—DIAGRAM SHOWING CEREMONIAL AVENUE OF AHU HANGA PAUKURA.
When the whole number of the statues on the roads were in imagination re-erected, it was found that they had all originally stood with their backs to the hill. Rano Raraku was, therefore, approached by at least three magnificent avenues, on each of which the pilgrim was greeted at intervals by a stone giant guarding the way to the sacred mountain (map of roads). One of the ahu on the south coast, Hanga Paukura, has been approached by a similar avenue of five statues facing the visitor. These five images when first seen were a great puzzle, as some of them are so embedded in the earth that their backs are even with the levelled sward in front of the ahu; later there seemed little doubt that, like the two giants on the south-east side of Raraku, trenches had been dug into which they had fallen. Subsequently, a sixth statue was discovered, the other side of a modern wall, weathered and worn away, but of Raraku stone and still upright. This is the only instance of an erect figure to be found elsewhere than on the mountain (fig. 77).
