DETERMINATION OF THE PEACE OF RAPANUI. 159 



Finding the Proto-Samoan component practically unmoved, the next 

 point of variety is in the Tongafiti. In the Paumotu and Tahiti it 

 undergoes practically no alteration in the two compared continuing 

 ratios ; in the Marquesas it becomes slightly less on qualitative reduc- 

 tion, in Mangareva markedly higher. Now we may assume, with 

 strong probability, that when the two ratios present practically the 

 same figures the closer we are brought to a case of direct migration ; the 

 higher the qualitative figure runs, the greater the effect of diffusion, the 

 further from direct migration. 



When we examine details within Table 34 we shall find certain dis- 

 tinctive features that must be attractive even if not yet wholly compre- 

 hended. In the provincial column in each language we find the quali- 

 tative index enormous under modulus 11, Paumotu and Tahiti standing 

 at one stage, Mangareva and the Marquesas at another. From this 

 we see that the diffusion is not a general one in this component ; that its 

 most prominent characteristic is the sharing of the speech material in 

 any one language with one other, the speech with which the sharing 

 holds varying in each case. In the columns recording the Polynesian 

 and Proto-Samoan, which we regard as practically conjoint, we find one 

 group, the Paumotu and Mangareva, in which the higher figures are 

 found for each component under modulus in; a second group, Tahiti 

 and the Marquesas, in which the highest figures of the Polynesian col- 

 umn appear in modulus in, of the Proto-Samoan in modulus 11. In the 

 Tongafiti column the peak for the Paumotu is in modulus iv, for the 

 Marquesas a double peak in the two higher moduli, for Mangareva in 

 modulus in, and for Tahiti in modulus 11. We feel sure that this show- 

 ing points to some successive shading of the influence of this component 

 upon the province in this order, direct or inverse. 



A few pages earlier I suggested the story of refugees and pursuit, 

 developing the idea from the place of mixed settlement whence flight 

 set out and pursuit followed. Samoa we know to have been the theater 

 of just such events, some intermediate group possible in the same sense 

 and becoming probable with closer reading of the record of tradition 

 history. Here I feel that we have the same story, not at its start but at 

 its finish. The refugee party keeps together in the hope of mutual pro- 

 tection. Quail lie close, foolish birds, in the covey, and thereby fall the 

 readier prey to their hunters. It is a human motive principle, for biped 

 wisdom and biped folly are not restricted to birds. A merry footnote 

 to our naval history was written when Clark was driving the Oregon 

 at full speed from the Pacific around the Horn to the problem seat of 

 war in the Atlantic. Somewhere off the Roque he overhauled a cir- 

 cumnavigator, a man coming home alone from around the world in a 

 tiny yawl wallowing slowly through the sea. An asterisk in the serious 

 history discloses at the foot of the page that the lone navigator hoisted 

 on his mere whipstock mast the bunting of the international signal 



