8 INTRODUCTION. 



It is quite clear that they derive, in 1882 and 1886 respectively, from 

 succeeding stages of a single prototype; what that may have been is 

 merely inferential, each visitor records his vocabulary without credit 

 to source. I am strongly of the opinion that each has made a tran- 

 scription of some manuscript list of words, for in several instances 

 Geiseler and Thomson are in accord in perpetuating errors which can 

 only be due to misreading of poor chirography. It is quite possible 

 that for his own convenience some such list was fitfully prepared by 

 some alien resident upon the island. This points particularly to 

 Alexander Salmon, who has for many years been in charge of the affairs 

 of Rapanui. He is Tahitian, and in the early days of his unfamiliarity 

 with the language he might find a convenience in noting various com- 

 mon words which varied from the idiom with which he was familiar. 

 We must note that, in addition to the faults properly to be credited 

 to the prototype manuscript, the vocabulary in Paymaster Thomson's 

 Smithsonian paper is disfigured, as is his whole narrative, by a set of 

 errors due to the chirography of the manuscript which he supplied to 

 the printer.* 



Unfortunately the same comment is to be made upon Pere Roussel's 

 vocabulary. The publication was posthumous, and not even the most 

 pious care of his brethren could be trusted to see through the press a 

 work in an unknown tongue. Some part of this error is automatically 

 corrigible in the inversion of the material and offers little difficulty to an 

 editor who has any acquaintance with Polynesian languages. Another 

 portion may be rectified by comparison with neighboring languages. 

 The residuum of error properly chargeable to this source is believed to 

 be very small. 



In the introduction to the Roussel vocabulary mention was made of 

 the existence of two manuscript copies. I wrote to Professor Colinet, 

 of the University of Louvain, senior editor of "Le Museon," noting the 

 errors of this class and bespeaking his aid in securing the loan of one of 

 these manuscripts. His response was both prompt and in the highest 

 degree cordial; he referred the matter to the author's surviving brother, 

 Professor Roussel of Freibourg. I had supposed that the manuscripts 

 must be in the possession of the religious of the Sacred Hearts, the con- 

 gregation of which Pere Roussel had been a member; but Professor 

 Colinet's reference indicated another disposition of these originals. 

 After waiting several months and obtaining no response I wrote to 

 Professor Roussel, renewing the request and enlarging upon the service 

 which the opportunity to collate one of the manuscript exemplars would 

 render to science, and suggesting that the present volume would afford 



*We have no difficulty in recognizing yet a third draft upon the same source in the vocabu- 

 lary of 1 16 words, of which none is not contained in Thomson, which is incorporated in the 

 Easter Island report of Surgeon George H. Cooke, U. S. N. He visited Rapanui aboard 

 the Mohican in the last fortnight of 1886, when that vessel was commissioned to bring away 

 the statue now in Washington. His paper found belated publication in "Report of the 

 United States National Museum," 1897, 689. 



