48 EASTER ISLAND. 



trouble in the same class of speakers. Peasant French or Cockney 

 English, the result is one, an aspirate is assumed where none should be, 

 and where the aspirate is vital we find a dropped h. This fact must be 

 recognized as conditioning the record of these tongues. The aspira- 

 tion is too positive in Polynesian orthoepy to permit us to imagine for a 

 moment that the Easter Islanders use it or reject it indifferently to any 

 such extent as to warrant the numerous duplicate forms which Pere 

 Roussel has set down. It is clearly a French type of error. 



In the case of all that element of Rapanui speech for which we have 

 comparative data this analysis of the aspiration shows that the Proto- 

 Samoan aspirate, at the time when this migration hived off to eastward 

 emptiness of sea, was yet sufficiently in vigor to insure its viability to 

 the utmost speck of soil upon which Polynesians might land for the 

 establishment of a new home. 



