148 THE POLYNESIAN WANDERINGS. 



bility is the elder? As between two great groups of speech, to one 

 of which the final consonant is most repugnant, to the other of 

 which the final consonant is so distinctly pleasurable that in many 

 parts of the group a stem final vowel is abraded in order to reach 

 a closed syllable, in antecedent probability which of these repre- 

 sents an earlier type? 



We do not have to rest on the antecedent probability, clear as 

 we shall find it. That the form in the terminal consonant, the 

 characteristic Melanesian form, is the earlier and elder is shown us 

 in the Polynesian itself. Look at valu (281) to scrape taro; Efate 

 bar u- si Mae barusi, of the same sense, might lead us to infer that 

 the root form is barus; in Samoan valusanga, the derivative meaning 

 taro scrapings, we find a direct proof that the >? is radical, for the 

 formative suffix was applied early enough to protect the final con- 

 sonant from abrasion. Examples abound in these data; I note but 

 these few for the reference of such as wish to give the topic extended 

 study: 71, 81, 160, 162, 191, 204, 224, 227, 266, 283, 289. 



This, too, plays an important part in the condemnation of the 

 sieve theory and the castaway drift. Which is more reasonable, 

 that a dozen very closely allied languages should act harmoniously 

 in dropping final consonants, or that ninety languages with very 

 scant community and no intercommunication should agree in adding 

 precisely the same consonant as closure to open roots brought them 

 in storm-driven canoes, and that the same terminals should be picked 

 up in several cases by the score of languages in Indonesia, a region 

 physically exterior to all such possibility of canoe drift? There can, 

 indeed, be no shadow of doubt that the Melanesians in their keeping 

 of the Polynesian loan material have preserved an earlier type. 

 Therefore the conclusion is inevitable that the Polynesians were 

 commorant in Melanesia at some time, and for some time, anterior 

 to their settlement of the unoccupied lands of the central and east- 

 ern Pacific. 



We are dealing in these studies with the record of what the Poly- 

 nesians taught the Melanesians, no inconsiderable contribution in 

 the aggregate. But did the Melanesians teach the Polynesians 

 nothing? Was the gift altogether so one-sided? 



In the rigid examination of the material I can find but a single 

 word which I suspect to have come into Polynesian possession from 

 Melanesian tongues. This is Samoan 'isumu (251) rat, and it calls 

 for no little agility to identify this word, not elsewhere Polynesian 

 and by no means in common Samoan use, with the word which 

 means rat in certain parts of Melanesia, namely in the New Hebrides, 

 and in the Solomons in just that area of the islands of the Malanta 

 channel which marks our curve of maximum quality of Polynesian 

 content. 



