10 THE POLYNESIAN WANDERINGS. 



Efate is not a large island, yet in every smallest Melanesian island 

 we are sure to find dialects from village to village, often amounting 

 to such extensive variation as to produce incomprehensibility. It 

 would have added clarity to this record if Dr. Macdonald had identi- 

 fied these dialects by their place names, if by nothing else. 



As it is, we are left without the knowledge of what is the speech 

 which he assumes as the standard from which these dialects diverge. 

 It is inferential, and only inferential, that he has assumed for such 

 standard the speech in the community nearest his mission station; 

 that is to say, one of several petty villages on Havannah Harbor. 

 Since the seat of the administration of the New Hebrides is at Vila, 

 in a different bay, it is possible that the speech there in use may tend 

 to become standard for official communication; yet not a single 

 entry in connection with these comprehensively noted dialectic 

 variants indicates which are Vila forms. 



More than this. In the examination of Efate material presented 

 in extenso in a succeeding chapter we have felt a grievous loss in the 

 inability to coordinate the several dialects in order that we might 

 study the several systems of vowel and consonant mutation, a 

 matter of vital importance. The most we can say from the study 

 of this dictionary is that at one spot on Efate, presumably proximate 

 to the mission station, the people use this word, other peoples at 

 one or more undefined places on Efate use this or that other and 

 frequently quite dissimilar word. To what a disadvantage this 

 necessarily puts the student appears in quantities that may be 

 measured in two brief Efate vocabularies,* upon which we had to 

 rely before Dr. Macdonald 's dictionary was published. From Hans 

 Conon von der Gabelentzf we learn that one of these vocabularies 

 comes from Mele, the other from Erakor on the south coast of the 

 island. The two lists contain resembling words to the number of 

 26, all lying within their common Polynesian content. The Mele 

 list, numbering 118 words, shows no less than 87 words immediately 

 recognizable as Polynesian; the Erakor list, numbering 121 words, 

 shows but 27 of Polynesian source. Mele is the language spoken 

 between Havannah Harbor and Vila; Erakor, on the south coast, 

 has the mountain center of the island between it and the mission 

 station which we have inferred to be the seat of Dr. Macdonald 's 

 standard speech. Yet the Erakor dialect, and not the nearer Mele, 

 most accords with this dictionary. With this suggestion of the 

 magnitude of the dialectic differences we shall feel great uncer- 

 tainty as to the results of the more intimate inspection of this 

 dictionary record upon which we are to enter. Dr. Macdonald'is 

 the one man who knows these dialects apart; it was his dutyUo 



♦Turner, "Samoa a hundred years ago and long before," page 354. 

 fDie melanesischen Sprachen II, 1. 



