BECKWITH] INTRODUCTION 323 
expression. The habit of isolating the essential feature leads to such 
suggestive names as “Leaping water,” “ White mountain,” “The 
gathering place of the clouds,” for waterfall or peak; or to such 
personal appellations as that applied to a visiting foreigner who 
had temporarily lost his voice, “The one who never speaks”; or to 
such a description of a large settlement as “many footprints.”+ The 
graphic sense of analogy applies to a mountain such a name as 
“ House of the sun”; to the prevailing rain of a certain district the 
appellation “The rain with a pack on its back,” “Leaping whale” or 
“ Ghostlike”; to a valley, “The leaky canoe”; to a canoe,, “ Kel 
sleeping in the water.” A man who has no brother in a family is 
called “A single coconut,” in allusion to a tree from which hangs a 
single fruit. ? 
This tendency is readily illustrated in the use of synonyms. O2/i 
means “to twist, roll up;” it also means “to be weary, agitated, 
tossed about in mind.” Hoolala means “to branch out,” as the 
branches of a tree; it is also applied in sailing to the deflection from 
a course. Atlohana is the name given to the outside decorated piece: 
of tapa in a skirt of five layers; it means generally, therefore, “ the 
very best ” in contrast to that which is inferior. Awapaa means liter- 
ally “to harden the back” with oppressive work; it is applied to a 
breadfruit parched on the tree or to a rock that shows itself above 
water. Lzlolilo means “to spread out, expand as blossom from bud ;” 
it also applies to an open-handed person. Nee may mean “to hitch 
along from one place to another,” or “to change the mind.” Pa/ele 
means “separate, put somewhere else when there is no place vacant ;” 
it also applies to stammering. These illustrations gathered almost at 
random may be indefinitely multiplied. I recall a clergyman in a 
small hamlet on Hawaii who wished to describe the character of the 
people of that place. Picking up a’stone of very close grain of the 
kind used for pounding and called a/apaa, literally, “ close-grained 
stone,” he explained that because the people of that section were 
“tight” (stingy) they were called Aaweleau alapaa. This ready 
imitativeness, often converted into caricature, enters into the minutest 
detail of life and is the clew to many a familiar proverb like that of 
the canoe on the coral reef quoted in the text.*. The chants abound 
in such symbols. Man is “a long-legged fish” offered to the gods. 
Ignorance is the “night of the mind.” The cloud hanging over 
Kaula is a bird which flies before the wind *— 
The blackbird begged, 
The bird of Kaula begged, 
Floating up there above Waahila. 
1Turner, Samoa, p. 220. 
2 Ibid. ; Moerenhout, 1, 407-410. 
* Turner, Samoa, pp. 216-221; Williams and Calvert, 1, p. 110. 
4 Williams and Calvert, 1, 118. 
