6 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



also there is water), Te afualoto, Motuloto, Te afua fale niu, 

 Te afuatakalau, Te fale (here also there is said to be water). 

 The names here given will, to those acquainted with Gilbert 

 Island, Tongan, Samoan, and Rarotongan dialects, furnish 

 instances of the influence of all these dialects in the nomen- 

 clature of the group."* In 1884 Mr. C. M. Woodford estimated 

 the population at 240. t 



VAITUPU. "Oaitupuj (literally 'the fountain of water') is 

 although nearly the smallest, the most thickly populated of all. 

 It has no lagoon accessible from the sea, and landing even is not 

 always easy. Here, although the soil is better than that of the 

 other islands, and the natives have taro, bananas, and pumpkins 

 to vary the monotonous diet of cocoanut and fish obtaining 

 elsewhere in the Ellices, they are very subject to that species of 

 eczema known as tinea dequamans (locally it is called 'lafa')." 

 The Rev. S. J. Whitmee says|| : " It is nearly round, about 

 four miles across, and has a salt water lagoon in the centre, com- 

 pletely shut off from the sea by a ring-like strip of land about 

 half a mile across. The population amounting to three hundred 

 and seventy-six are very advanced." 



The next island, Nui, Egg or Netherland Island, is remarkable 

 for being in the possession of an outlying colony of Gilbert 

 Islanders or " Tafitos," differing from the Ellice Islanders in 

 language, customs, appearance and demeanor.H Moresby says: 

 " We communicated with Egg or Netherland Island, a crescent- 

 shaped reef, with the horns of the crescent lying about two and 

 a half miles north and south of each other. The two hundred 

 inhabitants were all Christians, and had escaped the kidnapper ; 

 their village stands on an islet on the southern horn."** 



NANOMANA. "Nanomaga, the Hudson Island ft of Commodore 

 Wilkes, is the smallest of the group. It is barely a mile and a 

 half long, and not one in width, yet supports a population of 

 six hundred people. The writer (who was the second white trader 

 there since the people accepted Christianity in 1870) spent a year 

 on the island, and can bear testimony to the kindly nature and 

 honesty of its people. During all the time he lived there as 



* Kev. J. E. Newell Proc. Austr. Assoc. Adv. Sci. for 1895 (1896), p. 609. 

 fGeogr. Journ. 1895, vi , p. 344. 

 I Officially Vaitupu, otherwise Tracey Island. 

 Becke loc. tit. 



|| In Findlay Directory of the South Pacific Ocean, 1877, p. 753. 

 T Turner, Becke, Newell and Findlay loc. cit. Whitmee Journ. 

 Anthrop. Inst., viii., 1879, p. 274. 

 ** Moresby New Guinea, 1876, p. 77. 

 ft After the Commander of the " Peacock." 



