Portland Guardian (Vic. : 1876 - 1953), Monday 18 September 1933, page 1


1ThE 4" A 8Y CHARLEJ CHIAUVE THE STORY- OP rFi PICTURE T SA NAM -DIITRIBUTED BY UNIVERfAL PICIIIR

(Continued.) THOUGH it was uninhabited when the mutineers arrived in 1790; Pitcairn has many relics of at vanished race. Strange altars, stone statues, crude writings, ·and -other remains still bear witness to this lost civilisation. Other traces are to be found on the lonely islets and reefs near Pitcairn. Some day a clue may be found to this puzzle of the Pacific. CHAPTER EIGHT. Our home on Pitcairn Island, built from giant banyan trees and'ship's dunnage, stood some few yards back from the precipice which overlooks Bounty' Bay. The great stones from a pagan altar formed a foundation for the side of our house, while. the home of an island neighbor rested across the bulging stomach of a heathen god thousands. of years old. For one hundred years after t?ie mutineers had 'settled on Pitcairn four great images stood on the point of this cliff, gazing out into infinity; but some years ago, just to test their strength, two young Pitcairners pushed the images from the altar to the rocks of Bounty Bay, 500 feet below. One of these images, whizh wasionly slightly damaged, was-afterwards removed to the British Museum. The stones upon which our home and many of the other island homes have been built were once the segstents of a sepulchre whi:h housed the skeletons of ancient kings and high priests. The Bounty mutineers tore open these marnes, and. to their astonishment, found that ',the heads of some of these old kings rested upon pearls of a priceless size, and beside other skeletons were also found crude little marionettes, very similar to those found in the graves of Easter Island. There is no record relating to (~he fate of these pearls and marionzieds. Evidently they went-the way'ofT"T t of the- relics of Pitcaiin, and were exchanged to' a whaler for a round of shot or traded to a clipper captain for the price of a passage from desperate isolation. The original Bible of the Bounty used by John Adams was exchanged for a more modern edition, with colored maps, and the Bounty's chronometer was sold to a whaler's captain. Lowered by Rope. On the walls of a practically inaccessible cave and rocky escarpment are still to be seen the crude hieroglyphics of the ancient race which once peopled Pitcairn. In order to photograph these drawings, we had to be lowered by rope over

a dizzying precipice to a small, pebbled beach some seven hundred feet below. This undertaking was one by tedious and nerve- racking stages; pausing for rest and protection on hair-breadth clefts cut from the face of the cliff by the islanders, who sometimes chase the, beach below as a fishing ground. While perched in these places, the islanders would stand by us, with their arms interlocked with ours, pinning us to the side of the cliff, in case the sheer drop should cause that dreadful panic which urges one to leap to the depths below. This feeling gripped me at one stage, but a powerful arm jammed me to the wall, holding• me there for seconds that seemed like centuries. In a. cave continually washed by the seas are deeply-troded carviigs of the' human figure, birds, and very queer symbols. The monotonous swell of the Pacific ceaselessly rises and falls in this cave, soaking green layers of moss that lie at the foot of the wall, and lapping at times the base of a great hieroglyphic which closely resembles a massive Spanish candlestick. I have brought back interesting relics of these people of the stone age who once lived on this lonely, isle-large stone chisels and hatchets and perfectly round stone balls which were flung in battle from catapults. Stone Giants. Scientific expeditions have revealed to the world the mysterious Easter Island, peopled by great stone giants and strewn with crunbled temples of a pagan date, but the forgotten isles of Magna Reva, Oeno, Ducie, and Henderson have been left literally unearthed. 'Before moving on to the village of Adamstown and peeping more ininto the lives'of these descendents of tll .i tineors.-I.,-will -.relate'. to thereader What I have gleaned fromh hardy Pitcairn sailors and wanderers from Tahiti. of the strange lands that pivot upon Pitcairn. Its rearest.neighbors of importance are Tahiti, 1200 ,miles to the north, Easter Island, 1000 miles to the east, and Rapa, 600 miles to the west. To the south there is no land until the pole is reached. Easter Island is a barren island peopled only by a band of Chilean sheep herders, a handful of uninreresting natives, and the stone giants which sit with their backs to the sea. There are great quarries on the hillsides from which thousands of monuments have been cut. (To be continued.)