ON SOME TABLETS FOUND IN EASTER ISLAND.

By J. LINTON PALMER, F.S.A., F.R.G.S., R.N.

IN a Paper I had the honour of reading to this Society last year, On Easter Island, I mentioned that, among other curious relics found, there were some small tablets of hard wood, incised with symbols whose meaning was unknown; and I stated that I was taking steps to assure myself of the truth of various reports concerning them. As many members now here may not then have been present, may I be allowed to give a short account of these things, of whose appearance the casts and photographs on the table convey a fair representation.

There are but eight of these tablets now known. Four are in Tahiti; two in Chile; two in Russia.

The first three were obtained by the Chilian exploring expedition of 1870, of which one was lost on its passage to France. They were found in the half-underground stonehouses, near the Great Crater. We are told that, in 1864, they were common enough, but that most of them were destroyed after the coming of the Missionaries. Strangely enough, we have not yet met with similar tablets in any of the various groups of islands in the South Seas.

The tablets, as you see, are grooved into shallow channels. In them are incised figures and symbols; some very grotesque; some seemingly copies of such objects as birds, fish, eggs, &c.; some are compounded of these and an arbitrary mark; some seem simple arbitrary marks. We are told by the first Missionary that each symbol had its own signification (nombre), and that they were still copied by the

natives, many of whom had forgotten their primary meaning; and, again, that but little importance was attached to these tablets.

The characters in the grooves are reversed, cut upside down in every alternate line, so as to prevent confusion in reading them. This method is called Boustrophedon, and was used by various ancient nations, e. g., the Greeks. Instances occur, also, among the Himyaritic inscriptions lately found in South Arabia. They seem also to be divided into paragraphs by a vertical line of half-a-dozen nicks.

No sooner had these casts arrived in England than several savants began the task of trying to decipher them. Of these, Mr. Park Harrison seems the most zealous. He has read two Papers (now on the table) about them, before the Anthropological Institute. As, however, he had no Rosetta stone, so to say, by which to correct his suppositions, his attempts do not seem to have had the success they merited; and I must confess that my eyes do not see the symbols as he describes them. I have not been able to find out whether anything to this end has been done on the Continent, whither some of the casts were also sent from Chile.

Mr. Croft, who lately resided at Tahiti, sent photographs of the four tablets there hither and thither; but I have not heard that he made any researches into their meaning, though he says he found a native who could read them, and that they were about the religion, land-tenure, history, &c., of the islanders.*

By the last mail I received from our Consul-General at

• In Mr. Harrison's last Paper, we read:-" An Easter Islander in Tahiti professed to be able to read the tablet, but was unable to do so. He had partially learnt to do so, but would only say the signs stood for ideas and sentences." Mr. H. sent photographs of the cast of a tablet, now in Chile, to Tahiti, and found, in a letter sent in reply, that the tablet is "one of those which says a good deal about their chiefs," and that some explanations he offered were correct.

Tahiti, in answer to my queries, a letter, four photographs, and a notice, which, though brief, is of great interest.

The Notice is from Monsignor Tepano Jaussen, Bishop of Axieri, Vicar Apostolic of Tahiti. It contains the following details:

Of the four tablets in the Roman Catholic Mission at Tahiti

The sign for Earth occurs 362 times.

for Sky or Heaven occurs 115 times.

The following is an extract from the letter of ConsulGeneral George Miller :

"Monsignor, some time since, assisted by some of the Easter Islanders now in Tahiti, undertook the task of endeavouring to decipher these characters, and has filled a considerable number of sheets with the notes of his, as yet, unfinished work-now laid aside for awhile, but which he intends to resume at some future opportunity—intending eventually to publish the results in the periodical of his own Society, the Picpus, which, he frankly says, he wishes to have the benefit of first giving publicity to the fruit of his labours. Hence the brevity of the notice. But he has, however, expressed, more than once, his decided opinion that the tablets record nothing of importance, and that, though the characters inscribed on them may be of ancient origin, yet the work itself is modern, and relates nothing, he is convinced, beyond the stories of a child-like ignorant people.

"It would seem that, in certain districts of Easter Island, wise men' taught the art of reading or reciting from these tablets, some of which may still be found preserved among the few remaining inhabitants left on the island. Those of them who were brought to Tahiti included among their number some who said they could read this picture-writing; and some have chanted or recited to the Bishop from his tablets little tales of the simplest kind, such, in fact, as these islanders might be expected to be capable of producing."

This is the sum of the communication; and let us hope that the labours of Monsignor will soon be published. If the "simple tales" mentioned are but the folk-lore of the islanders, they will yet be acquisitions. How much labour has not the late Dr. Bleek expended on the folk-lore of the Bushmen ? How much exertion has not been used to collect that of other nations and tribes?

It may be that these tablets are only the "Horn-books," and we may yet obtain those of the records.

I show some of these incised characters, enlarged, to give an idea of the apparent hopelessness of attempts to decipher their meaning without an accompanying translation of the contents of one tablet into some known character; nor will this be the less apparent when we consider other circumstances attending the use of hieroglyphics, as this style of communicating ideas is called.

We have, as you know, but two methods by which we usually communicate or interchange our ideas:

1st. By sound--Music.

Articulate speech.

2nd. By sight-Gesture.

Symbol.

I omit the technical mode used for the blind.

1st. Music. If you think this far-fetched, may I tell you that, when I was in the Sandwich Islands, 1851-52, there was in use among the natives a kind of Jew's harp, made of wood, and strung like a small bow. This was played on by the mouth and fingers; and a young couple, seated on either side of a ravine or small valley, would, by the tones of this instrument, communicate their ideas one to the other. Its use was found to be so sensational, and to lead to so much waste of time (to say the least) by courting, that the practice had to be suppressed by the Missionaries. The same practice existed in the Marquesas Islands. So it is not the only instance of "Lieder ohne Wörte"; and you will find, in one of the prettiest of the Polynesian legends-that of Hine-moa-told by Sir G. Grey, in his Mythology (p. 233), how, in a similar case, the hero "Poured through the mellow horn his plaintive soul."

Speech and Gesture require no comment.
2nd, Symbol, may be divided into-

Picture-writing.

Hieroglyphs.

Character-writing.

Picture-writing.

Picture-writing is found to have been used over all the known world, Old and New.

1. Strahlenberg tells us that in many parts of Siberia are to be found rocks covered with picture-writing.

2. Charlevoix tells us how the various tribes of North American Indians sent news and tidings, as well as keeping their current history, by skins and pieces of bark and wood, on which figures were painted. I think you will find this mentioned also by Catlin and others.

3. Humboldt describes, in his Ansichten, the sculptured rocks found in the valleys of the rivers Orinoco and Cassi