CHAPTER I. 

 THE PROBLEM OF MELANESIA. 



Inosculation of the Melanesian and the Polynesian languages and the 

 determination of values therein — The position of Melanesia — Viti an 

 area of the mingling of the two stocks — Polynesia has charmed and 

 Melanesia revolted their discoverers ; our acquaintance with the latter 

 therefore falls short of our knowledge of the former — Islands of the 

 Polynesian verge — Polynesian inclusions — Languages which borrow. 



Based upon the possession of a greater mass of material than we 

 have ever enjoyed for the examination of any one of the languages 

 of the islands of the Western Pacific, the purpose of this work is to 

 present such determinations of ascertainable values in the inoscula- 

 tion of the Melanesian and the Polynesian tongues as the present 

 state of our knowledge may be found to warrant. We shall find it 

 convenient, in due course, to list a brief bibliography of such works 

 as have become available in the study of this topic. These inter- 

 esting and valued works of my predecessors in this tangled field will 

 be found to lie in two classes, the record of data and the discussion 

 based upon such data. 



The publication of Dr. Macdonald's studies in the speech of Efate, 

 eagerly welcomed and as warmly reprobated, has seemed to make 

 it incumbent upon me to engage more intimately upon the prose- 

 cution of the studies whose results are offered in the present volume. 

 His work upon Efate falls into each class. It is a considerable 

 vocabulary of a speech largely Melanesian; it is a labored essay to 

 build a structure of criticism and comment upon this material. We 

 shall welcome it in its former capacity as a long stride onward in 

 our knowledge of Melanesia; we shall find it quite as necessary to 

 subject its argumentative deductions to rigid scrutiny, in which our 

 interest is to remain cordial even though our judgment prove 

 adverse. 



The least known of the trine division of the Pacific, Melanesia 

 affords the most numerous and the greatest problems which confront 

 those of us who have given time and have expended thought upon 

 the study of the life of man in the South Sea. These problems are 

 of two sorts. One great class consists of the problems internal to 

 Melanesia itself, the other has to do with the problems of the Poly- 

 nesian ethnic and linguistic stock. Being problems of human life, 

 they are by no means discrete. The closer into them our examina- 

 tion carries us the more intimately do we learn the interdependence 

 of the problems of the one sort upon the problems of the other. 



