2 INTRODUCTION. 



Rapanui is most in use. It is this wholesome principle which has 

 restored the name Hawaii and has relegated the glorification of Cook's 

 patron, the Earl of Sandwich, to the gastronomic provision he invented 

 to obviate the necessity of remitting his devotions to the aleatory god- 

 dess of the green cloth, a great soul. But Rapanui is not an ancient 

 name. We know it to have been acquired by the people as a gift from 

 a foreigner, a visitor from the distant island of Rapa, the Oparo of the 

 charts, who discovered what seemed a resemblance to his own and lesser 

 island and therefore applied the name Rapanui, Rapa the Great. No 

 long time has elapsed, yet the name has obtained Polynesian currency 

 and a myth has begun to arise to the effect that Rapanui was settled 

 by a colony sailing out of Rapaiti, Rapa the Less. 



Cook and his recorder, Forster, with equal and simultaneous oppor- 

 tunity for the settlement of this question, lack agreement; yet this 

 is one of the first questions of all discovery, "What is the name of 

 this place?" Cook records it as Teapy, Forster obtained it as Vaihu. 

 As to one of these names we are in a position to clear up the error. 

 Forster's informant did give him the name, but it was the name of a 

 land or district and not of the island. It still remains in use, the name 

 of a landing-place on the south coast. Cook's name is readily com- 

 prehended ; it might have been either a local name or else a description 

 of any narrow (api) constricted place, either a neck of land or a settle- 

 ment hemmed in between bolsters of the cliff. 



Another name of record is Kiti te Eiranga. Paymaster Thomson 

 endeavored to ascertain its accuracy and found it unrecognizable by the 

 islanders. This well may be the case, for not only are the two words 

 kiti and eiranga absent from this vocabulary record of Easter Island, 

 but they are incomprehensible in any of the languages of the Polynesian 

 stem. 



Thomson and Pere Roussel* are in accord in assigning the name 

 Te Pito te Henua or Te Pito o te Heenua; they disagree upon its 

 interpretation. Thomson in his brief sojourn discovered the interest- 

 ing fact that the name was ages old and had been given to the island 

 by Hotu Matua immediately after its discovery. This recorder finds 

 the collocation of vocables to mean "navel and uterus. " Pere Roussel 

 translates it as "le nombril de la terre." Reference to the pages of 

 this dictionary will disclose how much of reason each has for his render- 

 ing. It is true that te pito does mean navel and that te henua may 

 mean the uterus or it may mean land. Thomson grows fanciful in 

 showing how his rendering fits the terrain, quite failing to recognize 

 that his version is Polynesian nonsense. Pere Roussel was correct 

 as far as his knowledge went. He was not sufficiently a scholar in the 

 Polynesian tongues to know that pito, in addition to its designation 



The bibliographic record of these observers is presented in the appropriate connection 

 some pages later. 



