The Mystery of Easter Island

by Katherine Routledge

First published in 1919, this work provides information on that most mysterious of islands - Easter Island (Rapa Nui). It details Routledge's journey by yacht from England to South America, around Patagonia to Chile and on to Easter Island, giving an account of its life, history and folklore. In the book, Routledge and her companions explore the secret caves, ancient roads, pyramid platforms and the strange stone statues on the island. She also discusses the Rongo Rongo script, the Bird cult, the war between the Short Ears and the Long Ears, together with much other material.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Travel, Science

404 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1978

About the author

Katherine Maria Routledge (11 August 1866 – 13 December 1935) was an English archaeologist and anthropologist who, in 1914, initiated and carried out much of the first true survey of Easter Island.

Reviews

[Maren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was described as one of the classic books written about Easter Island, so I decided to hunt down a copy and read it before our trip there. I was a little impatient getting through the first hundred pages or so that described Katherine's and her husband's planning for their trip and travel from England, across the Atlantic to Brazil, Argentina, finally through the Magellan Strait, a stop in Chile, and eventually to Easter Island. I'm a bit of an anthropology nerd and the fact that we were actually going to Easter Island were reasons that helped keep my attention while reading this book. If you really have no interest in the island and/or don't have much interest in anthropology/archaeology, then I wouldn't recommend reading it.

When we visited the local museum on Easter Island, and throughout the little guidebook that we bought there, I found several references and quotes from Routledge's account, which confirmed to me that fact that this book is still considered very valuable despite having been written back in the early 1900's, and nonetheless, written by a woman. Routledge is one of my newest heroines.

[Felipe Arriagada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro fundamental para conocer la historia y cultura de Rapa Nui. No le doy la calificación máxima porque a veces el punto de vista de la autora es demasiado colonialista. La recopilación de las leyendas es confusa, lo que se entiende porque responde a una escritura a partir de un registro oral y proveniente de diversas fuentes. Sin embargo, esto también otorga un cariz alejado de la idealización a los hechos registrados. Esto también se observa en la forma de relatar que a momentos linda con la oralidad, porque toma la forma de chisme o cahuín, acompañado de un cierto humor; el cual emerge a pesar de la autora.

[Karen Bottrell Turlay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Kindle edition is terrible because of odd OCR errors, missing punctuation, and poor quality of images.
Nevertheless, an excellent ethnology of WWI-era British archaeologists and the complexities of navigating in and out of ports, including a trip through the Panama Canal in 1916. The explanations of Easter Island were somewhat less impressive, though I'm sure there is information to be had in this account that cannot be found elsewhere.
Katherine Pease Routledge was a fascinating person. Daring, brilliant, insightful. Apparently she descended into madness and spent the end of her life institutionalized with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.
This is a strange book with unexpected events and descriptions. Examples: they stop at Pitcairn Island and hire a couple of descendants of the Bounty mutineers; pages of intense details of a waterspout; casual racism and British superiority coupled with acute awareness of the horrors of colonialism; some German warships show up and eventually leave after dropping off some French prisoners of war; and, finally, Routledge seriously entertains (before rejecting) the Theosophical Society's revelations through spirit communications about Easter Island and its connections to the sunken continent of Lemuria.

A small selection from the large number of passages I highlighted, which is something I'm rarely inclined to do:

"It has been made painfully clear to me that my presence on deck when things are bad is an added anxiety this [sic] is humiliating, and will not, I trust, apply to the next generation of females."

"It was my fist experience in scientific body-snatching, a proceeding to which later I became fairly well inured, and it felt not a little weird being thus in contact with the dead in his lonely resting place."

"My own tent, for the sake of quietness, was on the western side of the plantation, about a hundred yards from the house. ...immediately behind the hillock [by the tent] was the grave of the murdered manager. ...Tent life is not all 'beer and skittles'."

"The other source of information which was open to us was the memory of the old people. ...This field proved to be astonishingly large, but it was even more difficult to collect facts from brains than out of stones."

"the sides of the cave were also adorned with incised drawings of birds. In order to copy these carvings by the light of a small candle, it was necessary to encamp among the damp mould of the floor in contact with the remains of the dead. The proceeding felt not a little gruesome, even to a now hardened anthropologist, and the return to daylight was very welcome."

"The moral for shipowners is -- do not dally in South American ports."

[Peter Ellwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every now and then a book sits up and surprises you. You drift from one to another, enjoying them all as you go – and then along comes a humdinger. Many might not agree with my judgement I guess, but for me, this was one such.

The central reason others may not agree is plain to see in other people’s reviews: Katherine Routledge takes fully 30% of the book to describe the journey out to Easter Island, and those impatient to learn about the mysterious statues will find themselves getting - well, impatient.

But for me it was an unexpected treat. I lived in Brazil at one stage, and travelled around Patagonia and Chile; and I read the book from my retirement nook in Madeira. Sorry to name-drop. But what fun therefore to share her experiences of all these places, written with great style and professionalism. As a travelogue those first 200 pages stand alongside any I have read. I have for example read Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia and I know which of the two accounts is the more vivid and informative. Good stuff.

I can scarcely believe I am about to say this as I recoil from the feminist movement with every fibre of my being. But one truly engaging aspect of the book is what the twenty first century might call ‘Routledge as feminist icon’. She was a truly astonishing person. So were the rest of the team (all male, apart from her): having decided that transport to Easter Island was difficult to organise, they set about building their own yacht (think about it), and off they went. Imagine her, the only woman, getting stuck in alongside them. On several occasions she describes situations that must have proved difficult for an Edwardian woman, without turning a hair. By the time they get to Easter Island, where she was also the only western woman, there was a full-scale native uprising going on. She does mention passing discomfort as she sees her husband off on the return journey to Chile, especially as WWI had just broken out and the German navy was sniffing around. But apart from that, she just kept calm and carried on. She was anxious to learn as much as she could about the myths and legends of the island people; and so she taught herself their language. And on one occasion at least, actually went inside the leper colony to interview the last remaining person who could remember certain legends, before he died. Imagine.

I take my hat off to her. She never makes any special claims to sainthood and there is no reason to think any of it is a tall tale. If one wanted to harbour any revisionist qualms about her attitude they might these days lie around a certain sense of British imperial superiority; but otherwise the entire narrative speaks of understated British pluck at its magnificent best. The fact that she was perhaps beginning to suffer the onset of paranoid schizophrenia is irrelevant to this account - but all the same, it makes her all the more remarkable.

In structural terms, the book is a catastrophe. As mentioned, the first third is a (very competent) travelogue of the journey by sea to Easter Island. Then, half the book consists of her careful notes on the culture and history of the island. And finally, with a bit of a jolt, three chapters written by her husband on the journey home (she travelled back on public transport from San Francisco). His prose is nowhere near as good as hers and you tend to lose the will to live, trying to plough through it.

But the main body of the book – the culture of those mysterious people – is in my view a precious contribution to humanity. As anyone who has visited Easter Island recently will know (more apologies for name dropping; but presumably most people reading this review will have been there too), a large influx of Chilean migrants, and even worse, of tourists, has blown most of this fragile culture away. Routledge makes no claim to be comprehensive – indeed the closing words in her epilogue are “the help is needed of every reader who has more to bring,” – but her account is truly an important sliver of our collective story. For that reason, despite the awful structure, I’m giving this one the full five stars.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is written more like a memoire than a scientific study of the culture and history of Easter Island. I did not enjoy reading about her journey to Easter Island since my goal was to learn more about answering the mystery of Easter Island. If I’m honest, I don’t think she really answered anything. But what bothered me the most was that she brought up again and again how the natives there honored messages from dreams, but the way she wrote about it did not give the fact due justice. In my opinion, she wrote this book with too much unconscious bias. Now with all of my major complaints said, I do appreciate that she wrote of the significance of the supernatural among the natives. I just wish she wrote more on what she may have learned about interpretations of the rongo rongo tablets. I feel that her unconscious bias made her blind or deaf to the critical information that she may have learned on her trip, and because of this we unfortunately did not learn as much as we could have. Also, there was a point when she described a pyramid with 11 steps, then in the picture provided there were only 10 steps, so I worry that there was a lack of a quality review of her work. Regardless, I overall appreciate having read this book, but it was a tedious task like trying to find a potentially nonexistent needle in a haystack.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Profoundly fascinating and enjoyable read. Browsed this book for last eight months, on and off, finally closing it off today. A very thorough and serious anthropology of the islanders, their culture, language, writing system, history, and - of course - stone statues. A classic example of late Victorian exploration and near clinical detachment from the subject means this is work seeking an objective observation of what is present to be seen, discovered, recorded. The first half of the book is of Katherine Routledge's considerable (and dangerous) sea voyage to Easter Island, a book unto itself, in truth. An astonishing book that captured a faded history that was fading even as it was being recorded - means that this book remains an authoritative source to the present. A book to revisit down the line.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the first expedition books (it's from 1919) to that mysterious island. We get a good description of the island, the natives, prehistoric remains statues in the quarry and standing ones (the famous monuments), pre-Christian culture, the script, the Bird cult, caves and cave hunting and the way back home to Southampton. Missed a bit the alternative science/mystery part but otherwise a great journey with impressive photos and illustrations. Really recommended!

[Mark Lefebvre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Read

Would recommend to anyone. Very fun book overall. Spent a little bit of time off the subject but otherwise very informative.

[Andy Plonka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but it takes a long time to read and really enjoy.

[Emily Craven · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to research Easter Island for a new fantasy series I've been planning and once I saw there was a female archeologist and adventurer who'd written an account I had to get the book. This is an absolutely wonderful and vivid account not only of Katherine and her husband's work on the island but of their epic journey to get there from England in a custom built boat. The set up and journey there reads like a Jules Verne novel, engaging writing, characters and divine descriptions. Katherine is a super spunky personality, willful, practical and very smart. My only regret is that the final chapters of the book, the last 6months of the journey home was written by her husband who's writing is nowhere near as good as his wife's. It's only then you feel like you've been dumped from a well written travel novel into a slow nonfiction book. I highly recommend this historical read as a travel great.

[Tom & Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Transport yourself with this book

This book may have been scanned and processed from the original as there are some typos. The pictures too are scanned poorly. If you can look past the technological limitations , you will love this book not only for its exploration of Easter Island but also for its account of sailing around the world during Ww1

[Beverly Mckee]

Entertaining, and somewhat informative. I felt i had a better idea of the island from reading it, though not necessarily an accurate history.

[Billy Gunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read, a journey to a then unknown land. First contact made with an unknown people. Reminiscent of Cpt Cook!