GENERAL ACCOUNT HEDLEY. 41 



Premna, Gardenia, Crinum, Wedelia, and Poly podium; Medi- 

 cinal Triumfetta, Tournefortia, Morinda, Premna, Psilotum, 

 Cardamine, and Wedelia. Neglected by the islanders as food are 

 the seeds of Pandanus, eaten in Australia ; of Ochrosia, eaten in 

 the Solomons ; of Rkizophora, eaten in Papua ; and of Dioclea, 

 eaten by Europeans. 



POPULATION. 



Louis Becke, author of those charming and vivid South Sea 

 stories, " By Reef and Palm," and who once resided upon Funa- 

 futi writes,* " sixty or seventy years ago, so the American whale- 

 ship captains of those days said, there were 3,000 people in the 

 thirty and odd islets. Then, for the next thirty years, unknown 

 and terrible diseases, introduced by the white men, ravaged not 

 Funafuti alone, but the whole group, and where there were once 

 thousands only hundreds could be counted; and until about 1860 

 it looked as if the total extinction of the whole race was but a 

 matter of another decade. But, fortunately, such was not the 

 case. In 1870 the writer counted one hundred and sixty people ; 

 in 1882 they had increased to nearly two hundred." 



At the time of our visit (May - August, 1896) the census 

 amounted to two hundred and fifty or sixty. Woodfordf remarks 

 upon a similar decrease in the Gilberts. 



HISTORY. 



" Seven of these islands or groups are probably Samoan in origin, 

 with an admixture of Tongese. In some cases the Tongan was 

 introduced at a late stage, in others the Tougan element was 

 almost contemporaneous with the Samoan, but in all cases the 

 Samoan preponderates so much as to have controlled the language. 

 As far as I am able to judge from a comparison of the most 

 familiar words, the Tokelau and the Ellice Island dialects have 

 become practically assimilated to each other. Samoan largely 

 prevails in the whole of the Tokelau and the Ellice Islands ; it is 

 the literary language, except in the Gilbert or Kingsmill Island 

 colony of Nui, where the Gilbert Island dialect is spoken with a 

 small admixture of Samoan or Ellice Island words and construc- 

 tions. "{ Captain Wilkes in 1841 observed of Funafuti that: "It 

 was soon found that they understood the Samoan language, and 

 spoke a purely Polynesian dialect. The Samoan native easily con- 

 versed with them." Mr. John O'Brien tells me that he remarked 



* Becke loc. cit. 



fWoodford loc. cit., p. 334. An exhaustive Report on the diminution 

 of the native population of Fiji is, I understand, in course of publication 

 by Dr. Corney. 



I Newell, loc. cit. 



Wilkes, loc. cit. 



