THE SAWAIORI BEGINNING RESTS UNKNOWN. 181 



B. In Melanesia. 

 From the Isle of Pines, which at the bottom of New Caledonia 

 sets the full stop to Melanesia, to the Admiralty Islands, which draw 

 the northern line of that island province around and overlapping 

 eastern New Guinea, we find three classes meeting our investigation. 

 In the first is grouped the islands of Polynesia's western verge in 

 which, ethnically and philo logically, we are dealing with Polynesians 

 as surely as if we were in Samoa or Te Pito te Henua at the eastern 

 limit; with this class, and because of its established Polynesian posi- 

 tion, we have little concern in the present series of studies. 



The last class contains all those islands, if any there be, which 

 represent Melanesia uncontaminated by a Polynesian influence even 

 at second or third remove. This class also is removed from our 

 present study. 



The central class is that with which we concern ourselves here, 

 those many Melanesian lands in which the language record enables 

 us to trace a Polynesian connection in speech, the amount and the 

 quality of such contamination varying largely from group to group 

 and from island to island and from the shore to the interior of 

 an island. It is upon this class that our attention is fixed in this 

 inquiry. It has been our task to analyze and identify each item 

 of the contamination in so far as we possess the record with which 

 to study it. It has been our duty to pass definitely upon each such 

 item, to reject or to admit it to Polynesian kinship as the facts may 

 seem to warrant. From the items so admitted we have sought to 

 comprehend the system of variation from the true Polynesian form to 

 which they have been subjected in passing into alien use. We have 

 massed these items to the proof that they are loan words borrowed 

 by Melanesia from Polynesians. We have sought to account for the 

 contactof thetwo races in this area. In following up and, it is hoped, 

 plainly establishing the overrunning of Melanesia by a Polynesian 

 migration swarm, we have essayed to direct attention upon two par- 

 allel tracks of swarming, parted far to the west and destined not to 

 reunite until a long eastward traverse has been concluded. 



With the Melanesians themselves we have nothing to do save in so 

 far as we find them recording the passage of the Proto-Samoans, a 

 passage as to which the Polynesians have retained no direct memory. 

 It suffices here to state that the students best acquainted with them 

 regard them as a mixed race, the Polynesian admixture in blood 

 being more a matter of inference than a result of anthropometrical 

 investigation. There seems good reason to believe that under the 

 Polynesian admixture there is not one but several races. Up to the 

 present, on rather better grounds now than could be the case in even 

 the recent past, there seems to be a line of demarcation quite sharply 

 drawn between the Melanesians of the islands and the Papuans 



