Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 131, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1917 — Easter Island. [ARTICLE]

Easter Island.

Rapa Nui, Isla de Pascua, Easter island, an arid scrap of volcanic desolation, lost in the Pacific, 2,000 miles from the South American mainland and 1,000 miles from the nearest Polynesian archipelagoes, is owned by Chile, and is leased by the government of that country to a private company, which exploits its resources and the labor of its inhabitants. The yield in dividends is not wonderful, but if the scanty products of the island were annually disposed of to meet the needs of the natives, at least a small fraction of the misery now due to twentieth century vassalage would be relieved, says the Christian Science Monitor. The island, a lonely' sentinel of Polynesia, received the name by which it is best known from*he Dutch navi-, gator, Roggenwein, who discovered it on Easter Sunday, 1721. The world, which had been told of many marvelous things in the two preceding centuries, was hardly prepared to accept what Roggenwein and his party had to tetr of Rapa Nui, and it was some time before their stories were confirmed, even to the satisfaction of the usually credulous.