CHAPTER IV. 

 MANGAREVA AS A CENTER OF DISTRIBUTION. 



In the prosecution of the dissection of the several factors which enter 

 into the speech of Easter Island we are now brought to the examination of 

 the language of Mangareva. 



In the preceding chapter we have already oriented this extremely re- 

 mote island so far as relates to its geographical position. Regarding the 

 Paumotu as the high peaks just awash of a suboceanic mountain chain, 

 Mangareva represents the highest peak of the range and, as is so often noted 

 in orographic study, it is found as an outlier in solitary dignity. From 

 the southeastern point of the commonly accepted group of the Paumotu it 

 is set apart by considerable stretches of sea, and in the few lines of sound- 

 ings which have been made in the intermediate region we see that there is 

 equal and distinct bathymetric sundering. These stretches of sea amount 

 to little in the navigation of such adventurous seafarers as the wandering 

 Polynesians. The great double canoes of the epoch of the great voyages 

 were sufficient to cover the distance. The inhabitants of Mangareva at 

 the time of their discovery by the Europeans were not equipped to make 

 these voyages. Timber was to be found in abundance upon their moun- 

 tains, the protecting reef gave them the advantage of a quiet harbor to 

 encourage the development of the art of navigation, but through some 

 circumstance which we find it hard to comprehend the Mangarevans are 

 set at the bottom of the scale* in a race whose elemental characteristic is 

 that they shall breast the long waves of the Pacific in voyages immeasu- 

 rably longer. The art of the shipwright had unaccountedly vanished from 

 this one spot, and with it vanished the art of tracking the sea with the 

 guidance of the wind and the stars. f The highest attainment of Manga- 



*The Easter Islanders are quite as devoid of canoecraft, but their plight is other. Their 

 sterile island yields no fit timber and their sole dependence is on drift wood and wreck stuff. 



tSuch recession from a cultural acquisition so essential to the conditions of life of folk on 

 a small island set in great sea must be unusual. In general the lost arts are few; the loss 

 of canoecraft by an insular race is notable. Accordingly we shall find particular interest 

 in the report of the same loss of a necessary art by the Torres Islanders of Melanesia, far 

 in the west of the Pacific. It is recorded by Mrs. Florence Coombe at page 150 of "Many- 

 sided Melanesia:" 



"Clever as these people are at house-building, is it not a surprising fact that not a soul 

 in the Torres Island can build a canoe? Once the art was known as well here as elsewhere, 

 but the knowledge was confined to the skilled few who formed a sort of guild of canoe- 

 makers. One by one these men died, and the rising generation was presumably too lazy 

 to seek admission to the craft. The inevitable day arrived when the last canoe-maker died, 

 and all knowledge of canoe-making with him. The canoes he had left behind existed a 

 little while longer, but soon the last was broken up and there was no boat left in the group. 

 Yet still no man was found with energy, or ambition, or desire enough to set him to solving 

 the boat problem for himself. There are plenty of bamboos, and they will float. Tied 

 together with creeper-string, one can make a rough-and-ready raft of any size. And so 

 they make shift." 



79 



