3-021-167 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Group of images inside the crater of Otuiti, Easter Island, 1869. 'Mr. J. Linton Palmer, surgeon to her Majesty's ship Topaze, has favoured us with some photographs and sketches taken by him last November, when that vessel paid a visit to Easter Island, or Davies Island, in the South Pacific Ocean...The island is...rugged, and mountainous, overgrown with grass, but almost devoid of trees...The greatest curiosities are the numerous large statues or images of some unknown gods, worshipped by another race of people who formerly inhabited this island...They are...carved out of the grey conglomerate lava found in the extinct craters of the volcanoes...A party of the officers of the Topaze, Mr. Palmer being one, explored the crater of the volcanic mountain Otu-iti, where the lava images were manufactured. Here they found a vast number, some of huge dimensions, with faces 20 ft. long...Many of them were standing and in good preservation, but some were unfinished, and had not been separated from the parent rock. The work of sculpture had been done without any metal tools, by the use of stone chisels, a few of which were picked up, shaped like a monstrous incisor, or front tooth...The Topaze has brought away some of the images for the British Museum'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.