50 EASTER ISLAND. 



Paumotu that is to say omitting the rocky lands of Mangareva, Pit- 

 cairn, Elizabeth (with an elevation of 24 meters), and the atollon of 

 Ducie but two of the larger lack a lagoon, namely Tikei (which seems 

 never to have had the atoll form) and Makatea, in which the lagoon is 

 structurally present, but has lost its character either through sedimenta- 

 tion or through continuance of that extrusion which brought the bank 

 into a bathymetric position where growth of reef-forming corals became 

 possible. 



This barrier extends from Matahiva in the extreme northwest 

 through 35 degrees of its middle latitude to Ducie; and 20 degrees of 

 this extent, as far as Mangareva, is an all but continuous barrier of 

 imbricated atolls and intervening shoals. At its northern extremity it 

 intervenes between Tahiti and the Marquesas in the fairway of canoes 

 working on the wind. With its southern outliers it extends downward 

 below the Tropic of Capricorn and into the belt of the westerly variable 

 winds. In its northern extent the islands, while low, are sufficiently 

 close together to catch and hold chartless voyagers feeling their way 

 along the trades. In its southern extent, while there are broader chan- 

 nels of clear water, the high lands of Mangareva and Pitcairn extend 

 far wider horizons and thus serve equally to catch the wanderers who 

 have stood too far to the south and are driven eastward by the anti- 

 trades. 



There is one settlement factor in this ordering of the land units within 

 the great barrier which is a consideration far more important in the 

 study of Polynesian voyages than it is in our sea-ranging with chart and 

 compass and the logarithms of navigation. When our shipmaster has 

 computed from his chart, with the aid of sextant and chronometer, 

 that he is near his destination, he reverts to the old and helpless type; 

 he leaves the deck with the order "keep a sharp lookout forward." 

 With the Pacific voyagers blundering over the sea which, despite all 

 obstacles, they have made their own, knowing none and hoping all, 

 it must have been wholly a matter of keeping a sharp lookout, not only 

 forward but abeam. We might compute the horizons of Pitcairn and 

 Mangareva were there need, and thus measure the great reduction of 

 the width of the open sea between them. Even in the region of the 

 lowest atolls a sailor's eye can read in the sky at enormous distances the 

 loom of the land. The lagoon of Anaa reflects the sunlight which shim- 

 mers on its unruffled surface and casts so distinct a green hue upon the 

 trade-wind clouds which it creates that its existence may be known as 

 far upon the sea as if it were piercing the heavens a mile high instead of 

 lying on the waves scarcely as elevated as the seas which shatter in 

 tumult on its reef. 



I have thus sketched the position of the Paumotu because of the bear- 

 ing which its geographical situation must have in conditioning its settle- 

 ment, as we shall see in the philological record. An important factor 



