182 THE POLYNESIAN WANDERINGS. 



of New Guinea. To this conclusion point the brilliant studies of 

 Sidney H. Ray upon the Melanesian population of Torres Straits. 

 The same divergence, even within the most narrow limits, is pointed 

 out by Pastor Hanke as existing on the shores of Astrolabe Bay on 

 the northern coast of New Guinea ; the map accompanying his Bongu 

 dictionary, unfortunately without a scale for the measurement of 

 distances, shows Melanesian languages upon the offshore islands, 

 on the coast Melanesian languages in three areas abruptly separated 

 by two Papuan areas. It answers our purpose in these studies 

 to observe that the languages of Melanesia are not Polynesian, no 

 matter how much they may differ the one from the other. 



In general, and this note must be understood as of equal appli- 

 cability to the Indonesian division of the topic, the culture plane of 

 the peoples is the predeterminant factor in regulation of the nature 

 and amount of the loan material which they may assume, the pho- 

 netic system of their own speech functions in the degree of the 

 assimilation to which they may subject the matter thus assumed. 

 In this work I have refrained from consideration of the former factor. 

 The data here presented, offering a record of probably very nearly 

 all the loan material, should readily provide the stuff from which 

 the student of manners might construct the history of the difference 

 in the arts which marked the Melanesian as lower than the race of 

 hardy and brilliant adventurers who swept past his islands these 

 ages ago and brought to him a glimpse of a world where achievement 

 ran higher. 



So far as relates to the modification of the loan material in the 

 process of assimilation by the borrowing races I have been careful 

 to draft a table of such modification for every one of the languages 

 of which we have sufficient record, and in many cases I have supple- 

 mented this with a fuller discussion in the notes. 



The conclusion to which I am led is that the element common to 

 Melanesian and Polynesian is Polynesian material directly impressed 

 upon the Melanesian by borrowing under stress of the lack of name 

 for a new object or a new idea, or by the influence of some quirk 

 of fashion, a principle no less operative in primitive man's mental 

 equipment than it remains to the highest culture attainment of the 

 summit races. 



C. In Indonesia. 



When we enter upon the island world to which New Guinea stands 

 as the eastern barrier we find an immediate and a great decline in 

 the element which has been found common to Melanesia and Poly- 

 nesia. Only a few of the vocables in Melanesia for which we have 

 discovered Polynesian affinities are found to carry that affinity back 

 to Indonesia. Still fewer are the words which display an affinity 



