12 EASTER ISLAND. 



of more than curious interest was a small font such as would be found 

 at that time in use in the ordinary English chapel, a font of plain book 

 roman without diacritical marks. This stock was found ample to 

 express the sounds in Tahitian; there were letters to spare.* But the 

 Polynesians have, with a few exceptions, a simple sound which in 

 English is, through long-perpetuated error, expressed as a double con- 

 sonant, the palatal nasal, the ng of singer. But as the same combina- 

 tion of consonants represents typographically the true double consonant 

 of ngg in finger, there was objection to expressing the palatal nasal of 

 Tahiti by ng. Furthermore, the Rev. Thomas Lewis, who ' ' understands 

 printing," had other things to do at Matavai; time at the case was 

 time ill to be spared at the pulpit. He seems to have been a practical 

 man, this reverend printer in his chapel under the palms. The letter 

 g was not needed in Tahiti, for the language lacks the sonant palatal 

 mute; therefore he used it in place of ng, assigning it once for all to 

 the representation of the palatal nasal. Thus, every time he set g for 

 ng he saved an en, and a sufficiency of ens saved mounts up to the 

 saving of many ems, a consideration of moment to a printer who was 

 more zealous in saving souls than in running up a string. The use of 

 g for this ng characterizes the written form of all the languages of 

 Polynesia, save only the Maori of New Zealand, which was evangelized 

 under other auspices. 



The general rule of the first missionaries in Tahiti was to assign to 

 the vowels their Italian value and to sound the consonants as in English. 

 That rule holds throughout Polynesia. We note a few exceptions, 

 more apparent than real, since the systematic collation of comparative 

 material will introduce them into the pages of this dictionary. 



The French missionaries have very commonly adopted a system of 

 indicating vowels of the long quantity by doubling the vowel. This 

 is found in Rapanui, in Uvea, and in Futuna. They have, however, 

 adopted from the alphabets of English source the employment of u of 

 the Italian sound, and do not transliterate the sound by their more 

 familiar ou. The doubled vowel is found in Tonga also, though that 

 speech was reduced to writing before the French influence was intro- 

 duced. It will be seen that a typographical convenience underlies this 

 usage; vowel type cast with macron and micron respectively were 

 beyond the reach of missionaries struggling in distant nooks of sea. 



*Such as take an interest in the annals of typography will welcome a note upon the paucity 

 of the first printing establishments in the Pacific. As late as 1845 the mission in Hawaii 

 was hard put to it to print the elder Emerson's English-Hawaiian dictionary. The office 

 was wofully out of sorts. In the run of T we note these makeshifts: after Tallness follows 

 tallow; the lower case is exhausted at testament, which is followed by -estate; fortunately 

 the hyphens lasted to complete the signature of 8, for after -yrannical the ensuing signature 

 begins with Tyrannize. But one must pity the poor printers who had to run off the edition 

 and throw in the cases before they could proceed. In the B run we follow these shifts, from 

 Bearer to Beast, from Beguile to Behave, from Bellows to belly, from bondage to bondmaid. 

 Whoever can read the story here told will recognize that the pioneers in the Pacific could not 

 do as they wished; they could do no more than the type would let them do. 



