SEA CHARTS USED IN THE MARSHALL ISLANDS. 495 



But on the Rel)belil),s and the Meddos the locating of the islands for 

 navigation is about the same, since the sailing extends only so far as 

 to pass by means of the charts from one atoll to the next through the 

 water indications on them. 



I have, in all, five separate charts deposited in the Museum fur 

 Volkerkunde in Berlin, where they may be inspected. [Note.— Di-. A. 

 Bastian reports that the first of these charts was received by the Bci-lin 

 Museum in 1883 from Dr. Finsch, the second from Count Hernsheim, 

 in Jaluit, in 1884. In addition Captain Schiick, of Hamburg, has 

 made sketches of all known specimens. Dr. A. B. Meyer reports a 

 specimen in Dresden Museum. — Translator.] They are a Mattang; 

 a Rebbelib for the whole island group; a Meddo for the southwestern 

 part of the group: a Rebbelib for the Ralick chain, and a Rebbelib for 

 the Ratack chain. Now these charts are not generally serviceable and 

 established in the forms given, but they are made by chiefs for their 

 individual use as reminders of the various things which the}" have to 

 attend to in sailing, as well as for rendering clear the noteworthy signs 

 in the tuition of the uninitiated. 



Hence the repeated false and apparently wild information from the 

 sticks. For example, in Chart 111, Lojak told me that line HL was 

 Bungdockerik and not Mille. When I called his attention to the fact 

 that the former should l)e right under the latter instead of above, J;o 

 the left, and that the line HL, according to his own earlier declara- 

 tions, could mean nothing else than Bungdockeing, and at last also a 

 Kaelib, Lojak asked me how I could possibly bring the little stick 

 underneath when there was no place to tie it there ^ 1 might sa}' what 

 I pleased, he had fixed this stick as Bungdockerik; he knew what it 

 ought to mean and that was enough. The impossibility of fastening 

 the little sticks in their right places is at the outset the occasion for 

 individual variations. 



The interpretation of the charts is, for the reasons stated, ahva\'s 

 dilficult, if one has not the maker of the chart himself as explainer; 

 another, even an entirely competent navigator, can not undei- any cir- 

 cumstances read the deliverances of a chart which he himself has not 

 made. [Note. — This acute observation is worthy of notice by every 

 ethnologist. For example, the hundreds of totem posts and other 

 complex mythological carvings in Alaska, the painted rol)es of the 

 Plains Indians, and the sacred dolls of the Pueblo tribes can be inter- 

 preted only by those who make them. It is absolute folly to attempt 

 to explain them without this.] For that reason I can get no explana- 

 tion of the Samoan chart plan published by Dr. Friedlander in the 

 Journal of the Polynesian Society. It was told me that one might 

 read anything in the lines, it depended on how the chart was held and 

 at what point the islands were supposed to ])e; but what the maker 

 himself had thought about it and what he wished to show ))y the ciiart 

 )\g one would ever know. 



