PALAU — BAYER AND HARRY-ROFEN 489 



One morning while we were busy setting up the laboratory with 

 the help of Bob Owen's Palauan assistants, we became aware of a 

 scowling stranger who at first hesitated around the periphery of ac- 

 tivity, and then picked up a hammer and began energetically opening 

 boxes. This was Rikrik (pi. 18, fig. 1). We asked the others about 

 him and learned that he was a willing and able worker, knowledgeable 

 in English, Palauan geography, and fishing. We had learned from 

 experience that such a man is indispensable to an expedition, so we 

 hired him on the spot. Rikrik's scowl broke into a broad but tempo- 

 rary grin and we had gained a true friend. Later, we added to our 

 staff another Palauan named Sumang, who had a remarkable knowl- 

 edge of Palauan natural history. He could speak both English and 

 Japanese, was a village chief or "Ya'at," and knew practically every- 

 body from Angaur to Kayangel. Amiable Sumang Y. was a valuable 

 public-relations department whose good offices were a great advantage, 

 particularly during the long overland trips on Babelthuap, and his 

 memory of Palauan geographic names gave valuable documentation 

 for our collection records. 



The Palauan people use a different approach from ours to naming 

 the various parts of their homeland. They often do not give names 

 to islands as a whole, whereas groups of islands or localized regions on 

 islands may have special names. Rivers and streams may have as 

 many as three names — one for the part near the mouth, another for the 

 headwaters, and a third for the parts between. The imposition of our 

 own practice of giving a single name to geographical features upon 

 the Palauan system has led to either a part taking the name of the 

 whole, or the whole taking the name of one of its parts. Examples of 

 the latter kind are Koror, which is the name of a village that we apply 

 to an entire island, and Eil Malk, the name of a cape which we use 

 for the island of which it is a part. The situation is complicated by 

 the circumstance that we take many of our spellings of Palauan place 

 names from Japanese maps, which expressed them in phonetic 

 katakana characters. The English transliterations from the Japanese 

 spellings usually bear little, if any, resemblance to actual pronuncia- 

 tion, but they appear almost universally on American maps so we are 

 obliged to employ them in this account. Thus, the name "Ankosu" 

 as we use it is correctly spelled "Nghus," and "Geruherugairu" should 

 be "Ngaregelngael." A complete list of the place names we will men- 

 tion in these pages, giving the correct (and any common alternate) 

 spelling, may be found on p. 507. 



Actual fieldwork could not be started until our 18-foot fiberglass 

 boat was put into commission. Sterling H. Pierce, our engineer and 

 electronics technician, installed wiring, instruments, and cabin con- 

 trols for the powerful outboard motor. In due time, the final coat 



