INTRODUCTION. 9 



an opportunity to present in corrected form the work of his brother, 

 which must stand as the base and foundation of all knowledge of the 

 speech of Rapanui. Apparently these considerations did not appear 

 any more valuable on their repetition than when presented through 

 the mediation of Professor Colinet. Professor Roussel paid no atten- 

 tion whatever to the request ; he did not seem to consider it worth even 

 so much as a refusal; the letters remain unanswered. Accordingly I 

 have been obliged to establish a standard text through my own best 

 efforts; for uncorrected errors I am forced to disavow responsibility, 

 since I did all in my power to secure the means whereby they might be 

 corrected. 



In an appendix I have transcribed a considerable mass of scattered 

 references to Easter Island in general. It would not be practicable to 

 incorporate all the literature of the subject. I have omitted all such as 

 is convenient of access, as, for an instance, Paymaster Thomson's paper 

 in the Report of the United States National Museum for 1889. But it 

 has seemed of advantage to gather together the stray and less accessible 

 accounts and to present them here for the greater convenience of stu- 

 dents of this interesting island. 



The position which this investigation of the linguistic problems of 

 Southeast Polynesia bears to my major project in Polynesian philology 

 calls for a brief consideration. As with two other works which I have 

 recently published, this is preliminary to the dictionary of Polynesian 

 philology based upon the Samoan. My researches upon that central 

 theme are now approaching completion after years of diligent study. 

 "The Polynesian Wanderings" was written to clear the way for the 

 Nuclear Polynesian studies by differentiating the two streams of migra- 

 tion of the Polynesian race which have occupied Samoa and adjacent 

 islands in that mid tract of the Pacific. In that work I was able to 

 segregate for exhaustive examination the earlier (the Proto-Samoan) 

 stream of migration, to split it up into its two component streams, and 

 to trace each back to its point of emergence from Indonesia respectively 

 north of New Guinea and in the waterway south of that great island. 

 In the monograph on the "Beach-la-mar" I found the material where- 

 with to discuss a point fundamental in these languages, the beginning 

 of the segregation of function in the three recognizable parts of speech, 

 and therein I have made a preliminary statement of what is to be the 

 manner of treatment which I shall pursue in dealing with the Polynesian 

 grammar. 



In Southeast Polynesia I place under examination the utmost limit 

 of the Proto-Samoan migration: Rapanui, the final port of voyages 

 whose early course we have already discovered in Motu and Moanus. 

 These are chapters in the speech history of Polynesia of such magnitude 

 and of such importance that it has seemed well to present them inde- 

 pendently before advancing to the consideration of the main theme. 



