CHAPTER III. 

 THE PAUMOTU IN THE POLYNESIAN SCHEME. 



In the study of Easter Island we have had under review the ultimate 

 prolongation of Polynesian migration. How many expeditions passed 

 eastward without coming within the horizon of this tiny islet, a circle of 

 but a few miles, no man may know. In our acquaintance with the con- 

 ditions of such voyaging we see no possibility that any such adventurers 

 could have survived the sixty thirsty degrees of empty sea which 

 intervene between the last landfall of the Paumotu and the nearest 

 coast of South America. The Paumotu are selected as the point of 

 departure for reasons which will appear upon the charts. 



This archipelago has had abundance of naming. In the geographies 

 it is set down as the Low Archipelago, which designation is borne out by 

 almost every island and islet, barely land enough to raise into the air a 

 forest of that coconut tree which is at its best when its roots reach the 

 brine through salted sands. To sailors it is known as the Dangerous 

 Archipelago. That also is true naming, for no shipman can feel safe 

 when he knows that somewhere athwart the course of his voyaging, in a 

 tangle of currents which he can not measure, lies this mole of unlighted 

 islands upon whose barrier reefs he may be hurled. Even of the better 

 name, better because indigenous, Paumotu, we have variant forms, 

 Pomotu, Poumotu. This name is objectionable to the scanty popula- 

 tion of the islands ; they have united to secure from the French adminis- 

 tration the adoption of the name of their preference, Tuamotu, which 

 means simply archipelago. But this designation has not come into 

 such generality of employment as Paumotu; and for that reason we 

 shall use the latter name, for it seems not quite worth the while to 

 sacrifice place in the customary index arrangement. 



If we include Mangareva and Pitcairn (the only high islands) and 

 Ducie and every consideration of geophysics demands such inclusion 

 we are dealing with an extrusive bank whose strike follows that north- 

 west-southeast line which is so characteristic in the heights and the 

 deeps of the South Pacific, a character in archipelagic mass and in each 

 island unit. It is proper to describe this extrusive mass as a bank. 

 The southeastern extremity is the one point at which the rock structure 

 has reached above the sea. In the islets the rock has been raised to 

 that point of approach to the limiting line of sedimentation which per- 

 mits the growth of reef -forming corals. The conditions were ideal for 

 such growth ; of the seventy-six islands of the more narrowly defined 



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