Katherine Routledge

“ The new-comer arriving from the north is at once struck with the distinction between Brazil and the Argentine. Rio, with its strain of dark descent living in the midst of a dream of sleepy beauty, is still perhaps partly mediæval and undoubtedly tropical; Buenos Aires, on its flat plain and dreary river, is awake, twentieth century, and wholly European; but it is to the south of Europe that the Argentine is akin and not to the north. A Latin race was the first to colonise the new land, and successive waves of the same are still reaching its shores. ”

“ Presently every trace of vegetation is left behind, and the route enters on its grandest and wildest phase. Bleak rock masses tower to the sky on every hand, and on their lower slopes rest masses of boulders, which have descended at some earlier stage in the world’s history. When a great height has been attained a little lake is reached, which, with its colouring of gorgeous blue, resembles a perfect turquoise in a grey setting. At 10,000 feet the highest point is gained and the train enters the tunnel, which has been bored through the summit and which was opened for traffic in 1909. ”

“ The old street, winding up to the top of the semi-deserted city, along which must have passed gay cavalcades, sober monks, and captured Indians, is still the high way, but it is now carpeted with grass, kept short, not by traffic, but by the sheep which browse upon it. From the highest point, the view extends in one direction to the sea and in the other to the forests of the interior. The most arresting feature is the number of churches and religious houses: everywhere the eye turns these great buildings rise among the luxuriant foliage, from one standpoint we counted ten such edifices. ”

“ The Captain of the Kildalton feared lest even the distance of the settlement from the Manager’s house might not suffice to prevent the plague being carried there by insects, and told a gruesome tale, within his knowledge, of two white men who had gone for a visit to a Pacific island, one of whom on their return to an American port had been immediately sent back to a leper colony. But how could one allow the last vestige of knowledge in Easter Island to die out without an effort? ”

“ In its garden, peeps of the sea are seen, through graceful subtropical foliage, at every turn, and miniature land-locked coves, reached from above by winding steps down the face of the falaise, afford the most perfect of boat harbours and bathing-pools.
Another delightful official residence is allotted to the officer in command of the Dockyard. In his case he is given a miniature archipelago. His tiny islands rise from 20 to 100 feet above the water. On one is his house; another is his garden; chickens and pigs occupy a third, whilst his milch goats live on various small skerries. ”

“ One of the charms of a ship is that she never sleeps. In the hours of darkness the ordinary habitation relapses to a state of 120coma, and to the mental condition of the primitive jelly-fish; a vessel is always alive, always intelligent. The larger the craft, the more the vital functions are withdrawn from the common gaze; in a small yacht they are ever visible as an inseparable part of the whole. In wakeful nights and from hot cabins, it is only necessary to stumble up the companion to find the cool freshness of deck and waking companionship. ”

“ As we entered, a Portuguese liner, coming out of Funchal, dipped its flag in greeting to our blue ensign; out came the harbour-master’s tug to show us where to take up our position, down went the anchor with a comfortable rattle, and so ended the first stage of our journey.
The voyage had taken eighteen days, and averaged about sixty miles a day, as against the hundred miles on which we had calculated, and which later we sometimes exceeded. A man who crosses the ocean in a powerful steam-vessel, as one who travels by land in an express train, undoubtedly gains in speed, but he loses much else. ”

“ CONDITIONS OF LIFE ON THE ISLAND Easter is a volcanic land, and in the earliest days of the world’s history great lights and flowing lava must have gleamed across the expanse of water, then gradually lessened and died away, leaving their work to be moulded by wind and tide. ”

“ Taylor, the wife of the British Consul, to face the short passage from the harbour and visit Mana. This wind is purely local and a short distance off dies away. How, one is inclined to ask, can it be possible for English men and women to endure life in a tropical glare, with a perpetual wind without any trees, any grass, any green on which to rest the eye? And yet we found over and over again that, though the comer from greener worlds is at first unhappy and restless in St. Vincent, those who had been there some time found life pleasant and enjoyable and had no desire to exchange it. ”

“ Rugged mountains of imposing height rise on three sides of the bay, Porto Grande, and the fourth is protected by the long high coast-line of the neighbouring island, San Antonio. Standing out in the entrance of the bay is the conical Birds’ Rock, looking as if designed by nature for the lighthouse it carries. The colouring is indescribable: all the nearer mountains are what can only be termed a glowing red, which, as distance increases, softens into heliotrope. On the edge of the bay and at the foot of the eastern hills lies the town of Mindello. ”

“ The coconut trees are unfortunately dying. Each household has a share of the ground rising behind the village, and the hillside is traversed by shady avenues of palms and bananas, which afford at every turn glimpses of outstanding cliffs and the brilliant blue of the ocean. The standard of life compares very favourably with that of an English village, and is immeasurably superior to that achieved on Easter Island under similar circumstances. ”

“ Next day we left for Valparaiso, retracing our steps as far as the junction of Llay-Llay, and then traversing the coast range. The huge bay of Valparaiso, filled with shipping, is an imposing sight, and the town climbs picturesquely up the mountains which surround it; the higher parts are residential, and are reached by elevators, which are stationed at intervals in the main street, which runs parallel to the harbour. On the lower level there are well-built offices of leading firms, shipping lines, and banks, which give a pleasant sensation of wide interest and touch with the great world. ”

“ It leads first across the island by the western transverse plain till, at Vaihu, the sea is reached, then runs along the south coast with its low rocks and continuous line of breaking surf. Every step of this part of the way is marked, for those who have eyes to see, with ruined burial-places; many of them strewn with the remains of the statues which have once been erected upon them. As Raraku is approached, there lie by the roadside isolated figures of portentous size, abandoned, it has been thought, in the act of removal from the quarries to the terraces. ”

“ The great mountains, though they may lose in quiet dignity, range themselves in weird and striking shapes which attract the eye, while the verdure fulfils its purpose of showing off their beauty, here clothing a hillside with forest, there leaving bare a towering cliff. The white buildings which wander up hill and down dale are clean and prosperous, neither too new nor too old ”

“ LIFE ON BOARD This is perhaps as good a time as any to attempt to give a general impression of life on board the yacht. In the first place it should be realised that no hardship was involved, and that the sense of safety, so far from being less, soon became infinitely greater than on a larger ship. Not only does a small boat ride over the waves like a cork, but there is the assurance that in case of accident everyone will know what to do, and orders will be received without delay; there is plenty of room in the boats, and the lowering away is known to be a comparatively easy matter. ”

“ Unseen, on the farther side of the terrace, is the sea. The stone giants, and the faithful dead over whom they watch, are never without music, as countless waves launch their strength against the pebbled shore, showering on the figures a cloud of mist and spray.
Reconstruction and Transformation.—Those which have been described are ideal image ahu, but not one now remains in its original condition. It is by no means unusual to find, even in the oldest parts now existing, that is in walls erected to carry statues, pieces of still older images built into the stonework ”

“ The city of Buenos Aires itself, of which the docks have already been described, is simply a glorified port for this trade, and for the produce of a wealthy hinterland. The old part of the town, in which all business is transacted and which most impresses itself on the memory, is a labyrinth, or rather chess-board, of terribly narrow streets. ”

“ In Easter Island the past is the present, it is impossible to escape from it; the inhabitants of to-day are less real than the men who have gone; the shadows of the departed builders still possess the land. ”

“ One night we were asleep on the locker in the deck-house companion, and were awakened by an unholy struggle and crash. Nipping out, we found the Russian on look-out for’ard, regardless of the sleepers below him, had leant over her bows and had actually hoiked out with a gaff hook a large porpoise. It seemed impossible to believe that a man could have had the physical strength to hoist such a mass bodily out of the water, up her high bow, and over the rail. ”

“ This was almost the nearest we came to success in fishing from the deck, in which we were uniformly unfortunate, in spite of the fact that all on board were fishermen and the crew were professionals. Passing bird and marine life were frequently of interest. Above all the ever-changing ocean was an immediate neighbour, always claiming attention, whether it bore a calm blue surface, on which was traced the white line of the vessel’s course, or resolved itself into a grey mass of tumbling billows, ever trying to break and again falling back, leaving little white crests to mark their vain attempt. ”

“ Oahu.—After a five-weeks’ voyage, which included an abortive attempt to call at the island of Hawaii, we reached Honolulu, in the island of Oahu, on November 11th, 1915.
From the isolation of Easter we had come to the comparatively busy life of Tahiti, and now at Honolulu we felt once more in touch with the great world. It is a cheerful and up-to-date city in beautiful surroundings. Seen from the harbour it is not unlike Papeete, but the town is bigger, and the mountains more distant. ”

“ Every individual who has lived, even temporarily, in the place, has collected stones and put them up according to taste; and every succeeding generation, also needing stones, has, as in the instance of the manager’s wall, found them most readily in ruining or converting the work of their predecessors. Even when a building is comparatively intact, the original design and purpose can only be grasped by experience, and matters become distinctly complicated when the walls of an ahu have been made into a garden enclosure and a chicken-house turned into an ossuary. ”