n the west.

* * * * *

Ask of the people now, "Whence came ye? and whose were the hands that
fashioned these mighty images and carved upon these stones?" and in
their simple manner they will answer, "From Rapa, under the setting
sun, came our fathers; and we were then a great people, even as the
ONEONE [sand] of the beach.... Our Great King was it, he whose name is
forgotten by us, that caused these temples and cemeteries and terraces to
be built; and it was in his time that the forgotten fathers of our fathers
carved from out of the stone of the quarries of Terano Kau the great
Silent Faces that gaze for ever upward to the sky.... AI-A-AH! ...
But it was long ago.... Ah! a great people were we then in those
days, and the wild people to the West called us TE TAGATA TE PITO HENUA
(the people who live at the end of the world) .... and we know no
more."

And here the knowledge and traditions of a broken people begin and end.

* * * * *

I

A soft, cool morning in November, 187-. Between Ducie and Pitcairn
Islands two American whale-ships cruise lazily along to the gentle
breath of the south-east trades, when the look-out from both vessels
see a third sail bearing down upon them. In a few hours she is close
enough to be recognised as one of the luckiest sperm whalers of the
fleet--the brig POCAHONTAS, of Martha's Vineyard.

Within a quarter of mile of the two ships--the NASSAU and the
DAGGET--the newcomer backs her foreyard and hauls up her mainsail. A
cheer rises from the ships. She wants to "gam," I.E. to gossip. With
eager hands four boats are lowered from the two ships, and the captains
and second mates of each are soon racing for the POCAHONTAS.

* * * * *

The skipper of the brig, after shaking hands with his visitors and
making the usual inquiries as to their luck, number of days out from
New Bedford, etc., led the way to his cabin, and, calling his
Portuguese steward, had liquor and a box of cigars brought out. The
captain of the POCAHONTAS was a little, withered-up old man with sharp,
deep-set eyes of brightest blue, and had the reputation of possessing
the most fiery and excitable temper of any of the captains of the sixty
or seventy American whale-ships that in those days cruised the Pacific
from the West Coast of South America to Gaum in the Ladrones.

After drinking some of his potent New England rum with his visitors,
and having answered all their queries, the master of the POCAHONTAS
inquired i