.JO C. SKOTTSBERG 



Nau o Naunau (Santalum): arbusto de la familia de las santalaceas, tambien 11a- 

 mado nau opata, porque crecia en los barrancos (opata) de la costa, entre rocas y 

 piedras. Ahora ha desaparecido. Los liltimos ejemplares que algunos de los natives 

 actuales recuerdan haber visto todavi'a, se ban secado hace unos 50 anos. El nau opata 

 daba, como frutos, nueces del tamafio de castanas, los "mako'i nau opata". Carl 

 Friedrich Behrens norabra nueces entre los frutos que los islenos les regalaron en gran 

 numero a el y a sus compafieros. Hotu Matua y su gente parecen haber traido gran 

 cantidad de estas nueces, porque de ellas se alimentaron en los primeros meses des- 

 pues de haber llegado a la isla. Al excavar la tierra en cuevas que estaban antigua- 

 mente habitadas se encuentran cascaras de estas nueces. Estas cascaras generalmente 

 no estdn quebradas sino que han sido abiertas en forma de un pequeno circulo, para 

 ser usadas por los nifios en el juego del trompo. La madera del arbusto se utilizaba, 

 por su exquisite aroma, para confeccionar un perfume, como los veremos en otro capi'tulo. 



This description does not at all fit either Sa}italum or Myoporuui. The fruit 

 of Santalum is an ellipsoid drupe with a thin fleshy mesocarp and a very hard 

 endocarp, and I have never seen or heard of a kind the size of a castana (chest- 

 nut); in the largest I have measured [S. pyrulariuui Gray) the drupe was 16-18 mm 

 long and the stone 12-15 mm. According to Hn.LERRAND [joy. 390) the drupe 

 measures up to 24 mm in length, but I have not seen any as large as that. Xor 

 have I ever heard that the kernel is used as food; the idea that Hotu INIatua's 

 party could have maintained itself for months on nothing else is preposterous, 

 and I fail to see how the stone could be used as a whipping-top. The natmau which 

 grew along the coast and produced the "cascaras" found in the caves cannot 

 have been a species of Sajitahan. Fortunately this could be proved. INIr. STEELE 

 had told me that Father EXGLERT had sent him two shells for his collection 

 of Easter Island curios and had promised him more, of which he intended to 

 send me samples. As time went by and no more came I asked him the 

 favour of sending me one of his precious specimens as loan, and he willingly 

 consented. It is a hard, brown and smooth, almost globular shell, 2.5 cm high, 

 3 cm wide, 2 mm thick, with a large irregular hole in the basal part. It has 

 nothing whatever to do with Santalum. A passage in Metkaux's book, p. 353, 

 put me on the track. He quotes a song which the children used to sing when 

 the tops were spinning, and it tells that the spinning-tops were made of makoi 

 — Thespesia populnea capsules! A comparison with herbarium material showed 

 that Mr. Steele's specimen is a typical capsule of Z/'r.y/rj"/^. one of the "nuts" 

 found in the caves. They made very poor food but good spinning-tops. We 

 did not see Thespesia on the island, but Metraux observed it growing on the 

 cliffs at Poike (the eastern headland). Evidently the word nau or naunau has 

 been altogether misplaced by the Easter islanders, although both Metraux 

 and Englert were told that it was the name of Santalum. We find the same 

 word in Tahiti and the Tuamotu Islands for Lepidiuni bidentatu^i IMontin, and 

 this is called naripata^ strikingly like ExgLERT's nau opata, in Marquesas; in 

 Tahiti naupata means Scaevola frutesce7is, which is called naupaka in Hawaii and 

 ngaungau in Rarotonga, and on Rapa nau is used for Sonchus oleraceus. All 

 these plants were used as medicine. 



