144 ETHNOGRAPHY. 



a part of some primitive tongue, which has been corrupted and par- 

 tially destroyed by an infusion of Tahitian. This intermixture must 

 have taken place some time ago, at least before the settlement of the 

 Austral Islands, for the form in which the Tahitian words exist is 

 that which they had before the disuse of the k and ng, which has 

 made so great an alteration in the language. Many of the Tahitian 

 words, moreover, are perverted and disfigured as they would be in 

 the pronunciation of foreigners (see Grammar, $ 1). The gram- 

 matical construction, however, so far as we are able to determine it, 

 coincides with the Tahitian; as we find in the Vitian, though the 

 mass of words is peculiar, the grammar is chiefly Polynesian. 



From what source this foreign element which is here apparent was 

 derived, cannot now be determined. A comparison of the peculiar 

 words in the Paumotuan with the corresponding terms in various 

 other languages of Oceanica has led to no satisfactory result. 

 Perhaps, when the idioms of Melanesia are better known, the 

 attempt may be renewed with more success.* Future inquirers, 

 also, among the natives of the archipelago, may possibly obtain some 

 clue to their origin ; for it seems certain that their migration cannot 

 be referred to a very early period. If they inhabited the coral islands 

 before the arrival of the Polynesian colonists at Tahiti and Nukuhiva, 

 how did it happen that, being not only the best warriors, but the most 

 skilful navigators of that part of the ocean, they did not at once seize 

 upon these and the other high islands which are planted on the out- 

 skirts of the Paumotus on every side, and which contrast so strongly, 

 in their beauty arid fertility, with those bare and dismal abodes? 

 Had they once been in possession of any of these larger islands, the 

 half-starved crews of a few wandering Samoan canoes could never 

 have succeeded in expelling them. 



Another evidence that their migration to their present seat is not of 

 old date is the fact that they have not yet completed the settlement 



* Mr. Moerenhout, whose opportunities for acquiring a knowledge of the customs of 

 these islanders have been peculiarly good, states (Voyages, vol. i., p. 159) that their 

 large double canoes are made to sail with either end foremost, and that in tacking they 

 merely shift the sail and rudder from one end to the other. In this respect they differ 

 from the proper Polynesians, and resemble the Feejeeans and Caroline islanders. The 

 fact is also important, as showing that their method of canoe-building was not borrowed 

 from the Tahitians, and that their ancestors had thus a means of transportation such as 

 would enable them to reach these islands from a great distance, without the necessity of 

 stopping at intermediate points. 



