Off to Easter: Scientists Visit Island Which Has Lost Its Mysteries

£535,195 from January to September, 1935, a net increase of £44,144.

Off Toeaster

Scientists Visit Island Which Has Lost Its Mysteries From Our Own Correspondent PAPEETE, December 20, ANE of the largest schooners at Tahiti ” has been chartered to transport an expedition of scientists to Easter Island.

The ignorant but cynical layman pre'sumes to wonder what they will accomplish when they arrive in that “Island of Mystery.’’

The South Seas have been inundated with scientists, in small and large parties, during the past 20 years and (with the notable exception of the distinguished achievements of the Bishop Museum of Honolulu) there has been little, if any, addition to the sum of human knowledge as a result of their researches.

Easter Island has been explored, inspected, and ransacked as thoroughly as has been any locality of its size in the Seven Seas.

Everything moveable has been carted away and lodged in museums and private collections. The gigantic images have been photographed behind and before, measured in terms of millimetres, stared at, and prayed over, and reams of paper and oceans of ink have been used to record the lucubrations of the learned explorers.

The language—when it existed as a spoken tongue—was thoroughly recorded and analysed by William Churchill in his work on Polynesian dialects. It is reported that the remnant of Polynesians now existing on Easter Island speak Chilean Spanish.

The generation of elders who remembered the legends and traditions of the race has passed into the Beyond. The tablets inscribed with hieroglyphs have long since been spirited away and are available for study in various museums of Europe and America. There would appear to be, therefore, more material for scientific research and meditation away from Easter Island than on it.

We forget, however, that scientists, like myriads of lesser folk, are human.

The stuffy offices and bleak corridors of museums become monotonous.

Mr. George Follansbee Babbitt —the wealthy and generous patron of the institution —can easily be persuaded that an unknown beetle on a Polynesian island will bring fame and headlines when discovered and classified. Mr.

Babbitt also is human. He is promised a special museum bulletin, with his name in large letters on the title page, some paragraphs in the press about the Babbitt Exploration Expedition; and Coleopterus Bahbittus as the name of the new beetle.

The South Sea islands are delightful places for rest and refreshment. And, anyway, science will be advanced; for a