Page 183 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
around the island outside the wide shallows. Major Smith led us
past his house, which seemed empty, and up on the elevated
limestone plateau that was by far the largest part of the island,
scarcely a mile long and much less in width. And it seemed as ifa fair
part of it had been taken away by ancient stone workers.
We could hardly believe the evidence we saw of the extent of
former quarrying. In a few places were obvious traces of the early
Portuguese, or of the Arabs working for them, as we had seen at the
landing place. But these quarries were easy to distinguish from
those that dominated the whole island. The quarries from Por­
tuguese times had large flat surfaces which, after more than four
hundred years, still lit up the mountainside with a yellow-grey
colour and occasionally showed the marks of the drill holes used for
powder. But these quarries were superimposed upon and sur­
rounded by other quarries that filled almost every part of the island
hills and the coastal cliffs. It was difficult to locate an area not cut
into terraces, escarpments, niches and steps in times so long ago that
all surfaces had so darkened as to be indistinguishable from the
natural rock face, and so eroded as to lose the sharpness of all edges
and corners. In these by far the most predominant quarries the stone
worker, ignorant of explosives, had removed his blocks by rubbing
deep grooves behind them. And no two blocks had been cut the
same size. Most were no larger than four men could carry to the
shore on poles, but some must have been truly gigantic to judge by
the gaps where they had been removed, and by some unfinished
blocks still in place. In some areas bizarre formations remained for
no apparent reason, resembling petrified mud houses or cubist
monuments. On the north-west plateau all rock had been removed
and had thereby created a convenient site for the cluster of small
fenced-in prison barracks. Extensive screes of eroded quarry rubble
filled the area, sometimes in large heaps resembling burial mounds.
In the midst of all this old gravel a square outcrop rose like a lonely
building. It seemed as if intentionally left there to give an impressive
idea of the quantity of rock that had been removed from all around
it.
I was quite familiar with prehistoric quarries. I had lived with
them for months on Easter Island and had studied those left by the
pre-Inca master-builders of Peru and Bolivia. Also those that
yielded the largest one-piece blocks for Egyptian, Phoenician and
Hittitc megalith builders. The bone-hard limestone cliffs of Jidda
island had not been worked by amateurs, but by a people belonging
to the great old clan of true stone experts. Everywhere were

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