RAPANUI SOURCES AND VARIETY. 47 



The aspirate as mutation product of the sibilant is noted in 



740 743 744 750 753 754 766 789 818 835 

 The labial aspirate is found in 



741 742 745 746 747 748 749 751 752 755 756 817 



In the final group of the identifications, the Tongafiti element of 

 Rapanui, we lack a base upon which to establish comparison of the 

 aspirate ; we can do no more than assemble these aspirates in their rela- 

 tion to several Maori aspirations, themselves mutation products. 



The Rapanui aspirations which appear in Maori as h are listed in this 

 table ; three items distinguished by bold-faced type discard the aspirate 

 which the Maori retains. 



In the next table we find those Rapanui items whose aspirate cor- 

 responds to Maori hw, which we have external reason to consider as 

 commonly the labial aspiration; the bold-faced type distinguishes 

 those instances in which the Rapanui has lost this aspirate. 



839 844 855 856 858 952 



In 850 we find a solitary instance in which the Rapanui aspiration 

 corresponds to a Maori w, of course a weakened form of the labial. 



While the detailed consideration of the various employment of the 

 aspiration properly belongs in the chapter in which we shall sum up for 

 consideration the information we have been able to acquire upon the 

 inner relations of these five languages of Southeast Polynesia, it will not 

 be amiss to remark at this point upon one general factor. Our record 

 of the five languages with which we are dealing comes to us through 

 French agency. With all the respect which lives of devotion to bitter 

 hardship, which passionate sacrifice of self to a higher and spiritual duty 

 must arouse in all sympathetic souls who in the South Sea have 

 observed these French priests, we should be remiss to our philological 

 duty if we should omit from the record a condition which functions 

 largely. It is not because they are French, these poor missionaries, 

 that their linguistic records are to rank somewhat below the maximum 

 of excellence ; nor is it because they are clergymen, for all our Polynesian 

 records come from missionaries of one communion or another. But of 

 the two congregations operative in Polynesia it is well known that the 

 mission priests are drawn from the peasant class of France and par- 

 ticularly from the northern peasantry. Now it is just in that class 

 that the aspirate is uncertain upon the tongue and at the gateway of the 

 ear, just as in some dialects of English we are familiar with the same 



