The Oceanic Languages Shemitic : a Discovery. 273 



Chaldee of the Bible, it will become necessary henceforth 

 to refer not merely to the Arabic and Syriac, Phoenician 

 and Ethiopic, but also to the Oceanic. Moreover, as men 

 and as Christians, we owe a duty to these men and women 

 of the isles of the sea, and it is to be hoped that the dis- 

 covery of their high birth, of their ancient and noble 

 ancestry, and remarkable and sad history, will engage us to 

 the performance of that duty with more interest and sym- 

 pathy, even as by the increase of knowledge it gives us for 

 performing it additional means of the highest value, and 

 greater power. 



Fourthly and finally, I invite other workers into the field. 

 There has been discovered a mine of inexhaustible wealth. 

 Let all who will come and dig. A wealthy gentleman of 

 New South Wales some time ago fitted out a scientific ex- 

 pedition to New Guinea, and for this his name is worthy to 

 be held in high honour as long as Australia shall exist. The 

 " Cheviot" — that was the ship of that expedition — now lies 

 a dismasted hull in Havannah harbour, Efate,* within sight 

 of the writer's residence. Let some such gentleman, or 

 scientific body, send an expedition to Oceania and the 

 Shemitic mainland, from which its population originally 

 came, to gather knowledge, philological and ethnological, in 

 accordance with the discovery announced in this paper, and 

 the results, as certain as harvest to the husbandman, will be 

 altogether adequate and worthy, in a great and sensible 

 addition to the permanent and public stock of wisdom and 

 knowledge. 



Abbreviations : 



Oc, Oceanic Sh., Shemitic 



Ef, Efate Ch., Chaldee 



My., Malay Heb., Hebrew 



Po., Polynesian Syr v Syriac 



Mg., Malagasy Arb., Arabic 



Tah., Tahitian Amh., Amharic 



Sam., Samoan Arm., Aramaic 



An., Aneityumese Eth., Ethiopic 



Ero., Eromangan Abyss., Abyssinian 



Mall., Mallicollan Assy., Assyrian 



* Efate, Fate, or Vate, was discovered by Captain Cook, who called it 

 Sandwich Island : it is about the middle of the New Hebrides Group. 



U 



