to Easter Island or Rapa Nui in 1868, as published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society for

1870.

These marvellous remains and those of the Carolines are the great Pacific puzzle for ethnologists. The Island of New Caledonia is not within my present

scope.

CHAPTER XVIII.

'WHO BUILT THOSE FORTS ?'

EASTWARD of the Marshall Group extends the great archipelago of the Carolines, covering the sea from the Radack chain to the Palaos, a distance of over 2000 miles, and containing more than 500 islands, most of which are very little known. Some of them, especially towards the westward, are uninhabited, having been depopulated by the Spaniards for the settlement of the Ladrones. Others are very populous, and, with the exception of that particular group known as the Seniavinès, at the eastern end of the archipelago, and Yap at the opposite extremity, have enjoyed very little acquaintance with civilised man.

On the eastern side of the Carolines, the most important is called Kusaie, or Strong Island. It is lofty and basaltic, and about 80 miles in circumference, and has two secure harbours for the largest class of vessels. It is governed by a king, there are about 2000 inhabitants, naturally industrious and well disposed, though they have been a little demoralised by bêchede-mer fishers and the crews of whaling vessels, who sometimes make this place one of great resort. The

antagonism of ruffianly white traders, both rich and poor, to the missionaries all over the Pacific, has done more to obstruct the material progress or conversion of the natives, than any native savagery or heathen ignorance. The time has surely arrived when British commerce, legitima tely carried on, and content with its own vocation, should reap the just reward of wellorganised enterprise among these fabulously rich archipelagoes, leaving the missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, to continue their spiritual labours unmolested by word or deed, provided they, on their part, confine themselves strictly to their proper province. Some readers may consider this a dream, but I have seen an approach to the reality in Fiji and elsewhere.

The Kusaie islanders are evidently capable of a higher civilisation than most of the Polynesians. There can be no doubt that, at one time, they were in a much more enlightened and advanced state than they are to-day. Large tracts of their land are covered with ruins of the most massive description, built upon a general plan which could only have been designed by men of great intelligence, and acquainted with mechanical appliances for raising enormous weights, and transporting huge blocks of stone considerable distances, both by land and water. Like the Samoans and Tongans, they have ancient traditions and forms of government. Traditional laws exist as to the intercourse of different castes. The nobles associate by signs and speech not known to the majority of the people, and words are tabooed in the Carolines as they are in Tonga.

The inhabitants of Kusaie are of large size and strongly built, with a nut-brown complexion. Their hair grows long in curling tresses, which they confine in one knot at the back of the head. Tatooing is generally practised, and, like other Polynesian races, fragrant flowers are worn as a wreath round the head or through the pierced cartilage of the nostrils, while in their ears they are very fond of tortoise-shell ornaments. I met a beachcomber named Wilson, who had resided for a long time in Kusaie; but owing to a 'family' dispute, he had left the Carolines, and settled in the Marquesas at the other end of the Pacific. He told me he had received nothing but kindness from the Caroline islanders, and such is the general testimony of men who know how to conduct themselves among Polynesian races with tolerable decency.

When a chief dies, they make a mummy of the body, and swathe it in coloured bandages. It is watched for a whole year, a fire being kept beside it, which is never allowed to go out. Records are kept by wooden beads and knotted cords, which they carefully preserve and refer to when they want to tell what happened in a bygone time.

The timber of their houses is invariably squared. They possessed, from remote times, the arts of pottery and weaving with a loom; and traditions they repeat of their ancestors, point to the conclusion that at some very distant date they were a rich, numerous, and powerful people.

The ruins in Kusaie were supposed, by early writers on the Pacific, to be the work of Spanish buccaneers ;

but this is an almost ludicrous supposition, inasmuch as D'Urville 6 says that the stones measure eight and ten feet in length, are squared upon six sides, and have evidently been brought hither from some other country, there being no other stone in the island similar to them;' whereas Mr. Sterndale, who eight years ago stayed on the island, says: 'The stones are in many cases much larger than here described, in fact as large again. They are basaltic prisms quarried on the land itself, as I have seen. It would have taken all the labour of the Spanish pirates, from the days of Balboa till now, to build all the monstrous works that exist in Strong Island.'

Kusaie, or Strong Island, is immensely productive, especially in a very valuable timber which successfully resists all attacks of the salt-water worm. The piles of a dry dock and wharves at Shanghai, and other China ports, have been built with wood brought from Kusaie.

The Island of Ascension, or Ponape, is very similar to Kusaie, excepting that it is larger and contains. considerable tracts of nearly level country, irrespective of the low valleys and flats along the sea coast. It is the garden of the Carolines. Grand streams run in all directions, and cascades which could turn mills abound, while the streams in the valleys have sufficient volume to float rafts, and for the navigation of largesized boats.

The interior is altogether uninhabited, although covered with the ruins of ancient civilisation. The natives have a superstitious dread of going into the interior. A few years ago the population was estimated at about 7000.