490 THE POLYNESIAN WANDERINGS. 



Assuming for the present, and only for the present, a standard Mela- 

 nesian, we must consider how that element could be communicated to the 

 New Guinea coast. Either the inhabitants of the Gulf of Papua voyaged 

 to some place of Melanesian culture, remained sufficiently long to acquire 

 the Melanesian element they are considered now to possess, and voyaged 

 home again; or else the Melanesians put to sea from their own lands, 

 colonized the New Guinea coast, and survive in these settlements discrete 

 from the Papuan autochthons. Either movement predicates navigation. 

 The Melanesians are notoriously not a seagoing race ; with very few excep- 

 tions their art of canoe building has advanced no greater distance than is 

 required for the construction of light dugouts in which the single paddler 

 scarcely dares follow the fish outside the still lagoon water within his reef. 



The seamanship of the coastal peoples of New Guinea is of no better 

 order ; when the most adventurous of all this race sets forth upon its annual 

 sago voyage, the putting to sea remains so unusual to their custom on the 

 water that it is surrounded with all the formality of religious rites. It is 

 not like the free adventure of the hardy seaman who hoists sail on the 

 canoe in which he has confidence, trims the sheet to force the wind to work 

 for him, and gaily sails to a distant port, all in the day's work. The voyage 

 of the New Guinea traders of pots for sago is no more than across the head 

 of the gulf, from Motu to Elema, yet it can be accomplished only with the 

 favor of fair winds; the return voyage can not be made until the wind 

 changes in the seasonal break of the monsoon. Even the name of the vessel 

 which has specially to be compacted for this voyage shows that its navi- 

 gation is a foreign art, for lakatoi is a survival from something borrowed ; 

 it is a mutant of vaka-tolu, which we have no difficulty in interpreting as 

 "three boats," and that is true to the naval architecture, for the Motu man 

 fears the sea so cordially that he will not allow even his zeal for trading to 

 trust himself to the waves in anything less stable than three boats lashed 

 together. Whether the fleets of Motu went to northern Melanesia or Mela- 

 nesia came to the Gulf of Papua, we are confronted by the need of canoe- 

 craft and seamanship which has utterly vanished. Neither voyage could 

 be repeated in these days ; the people at each end have not the boats nor 

 the ability to sail them ; they fear the sea. 



On either side these folk who fear the sea we have the clear record of a 

 race who made the sea their own, even to its empty limit, who have adven- 

 tured such voyages to distant lands and a safe return as proved beyond 

 the power of our own race until four centuries ago. 



Dr. Ray rests his Melanesian identification upon the Melanesian of Dr. 

 Codrington's study. In this volume we have worked intimately over that 

 Melanesian possession. We have found no language which we might estab- 

 lish as the standard Melanesian, no Ursprache from which the jangling 

 multiplicity of languages might be shown to derive. There is none such ; 

 there is no standard Melanesian. In these data we have examined the 

 element common to the languages from Moanus to the southern tip of New 

 Caledonia. We have found this element everywhere reducible to its par- 

 entage ; we have found it Polynesian material borrowed by ruder people. 



The same identification holds when we examine the data collected in 

 Torres Straits. It is Polynesian material. It would have been possible 



