EASTER ISLAND.
THE DREAMLAND OF THE SOUTH SEAS. COULD THEY BUT SPEAK!
There is no quarry on this little island from which it could have been taken, neither could it have been brought from a distant land, for ancient boats were not adequate.
The quarry from which it came, the mysteries of the people who such art designed, and the homes in which they lived, must be nearby, beneath the waves.
To satisfy curiosity, I took a shell boat to Easter Island, where those strange saint-like statues with sealed lips now stand, pre-eminent sentinels, as they have stood since the day when the Mid-Pacific continent was a prominent feature on our globe. On this tiny mid-ocean world the natives know about as much concerning the origin of their clans as we do about pre-existence. They shelter from storm in stone houses, of which the walls are four or five feet thick.
Many of the inner walls still bear traces of an intelligent people. Hieroglyphic characters and paintings of birds and other animals adorn the inner walls of what must have been the mansions of nabobs, while many statues of these unknown people with thin lips and serious countenances stand facing the sea. Like the fort on the Helomano and the colossal on Tonga, they speak for themselves, and while each have no tradition of other tribes, still all their languages spring from the same roots.
As I stood on deck gazing at these faces a spell came over me and from above I looked down on our world 100,000 years ago.
Before me lay an elbow-shaped mid-Pacific continent 2,000 miles wide and 8,000 miles long, on which millions of half-civilized people were passing their days and years as we are now doing, while the land of the morning sun teemed with shore and inland animal life roaming over the vast plains sheltered by primeval forests. Suddenly, as I gazed, the world trembled and reeled as the vast plains at the rising sun begun belching forth lightning and fire amid peals of thunder destroying all animal life as an immense mountain range came forth like a budless blossom far up and down the ocean shore.