In a short cable dealing with the latest details of the catastrophe which has as recently overwhelmed Valparaiso and its environments the, message ends with the laconic statement that "Easter Island and-Mystery Island have completely disappeared." As the name betrays, but little is mown con-ming Mystery Island: but the disappearance of Easter Island effectively concludes a mystery Which has long hatiied the leading ethnologists and archeologists of the day. Fortunately, the island was practically uninhabitafed Nom-mally controled by the Government of Chile, it has been used, of late years, as a grazing and breeding-ground for cattle, under the care of a few peons, These flourished on the luxurious grass which clothed the lower slopes; and, save for these products of a modern age combined with the erratic visits of members of various ethnological societies bent on the solution, of that enigma of the Pacific, or those of wealthy twen-teeth-century adventurers, the silent {sentinels who guarded that spot saw but little more than the dawning and setting of the sun.
When the island was first rediscovered, it was uninhabited save by the ghosts of a long-lost civilization. Even the very birds shunned the place, as if unhallowed. But, of these "ghosts'—solid enough, in truth,—what rumours, conjectures, wrangling and controversies have their presence there not evolved? For untold centuries these products of a lost civilization have guarded the secrets of a by-gone race. Now, in one short moment of time, they have sunk beneath the waves carrying their story sealed behind their granite lips. The mystery will never be solved.
One clue has been discovered; a clue, so slender as to be almost neslicibls. Ty addition to those monoliths was found on the island a small piece of carving covered with characters of a writing hitherto unknown. This, in itself, proves that the orignal inhabitants were members of no mean civilization: for, it is the only proof of a race existing in one of the many islands of that mis-named ocean which had a knowledge of writing. Till the present day, no man had been able to decipher those characters. OF all the writings of the known world, those on the "Sacred Drums" in the Temple of Confucius at Peking are the most similar. and, in; that, lies the slender clue.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.