CoLENSO. — On the Maori Maces of New Zealand. 393 



translations made for the G-overnment of English documents into the New 

 Zealand language are more or less faulty ; partly, no doubt, owing to the 

 translator's contracted knowledge of the English language, and partly to 

 the faulty correction of such printed documents ; as in the New Zealand 

 tongue the typographical error of a single letter is sure to alter the meaning 

 of that word, and not unfrequently the whole sentence. 



49. It is an astonishing fact, and one worthy of close attention from 

 future philologists, that the Polynesian language, of which the New Zealand 

 is a branch dialect, is commonly spoken by people scattered over one-tenth 

 of the whole globe. Throughout an island area, containing eighty degrees 

 of latitude and seventy degrees of longitude, from Stewart Island in the 

 New Zealand group, in 47° S. lat., to the North Island in the Sandwich 

 group, in 22° N. lat., and from the west coast of New Zealand, in long. 167° 

 E., to Easter Island in 109° W., is this great Polynesian language spoken. 

 It has also been detected* in names of places and in sentences used in the 

 Island of Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean ; although, from its not having 

 been adopted, by the missionaries there in their translations, it is considered 

 (viewed from this distance) as probably belonging to an older form of the 

 present Malagasi, or to a distinct and more ancient language. The Poly- 

 nesian is therefore peculiarly an island language, being nowhere found on 

 the mainland in either the east or west continents, or in any of the larger 

 semi-continental islands of the world. Another interesting fact is, that 

 while there are many known dialects in use, some of which differ greatly 

 among the various islands and groups within the above-mentioned area, the 

 extreme outlying ones, viz. the Sandwich Islands on the north. New Zealand 

 on the south and west, and Easter Island on the east, are those possessing 

 the dialects nearest to each other, in several instances the words and sen- 

 tences being identically the same.f "Williams, of the London Mission, who 

 spent many years among the islands, considered the principal dialects as 

 being eight in number, viz. the Sandwich, the Tahitian and Society, the 

 Marquesan, the Austral, the Hervey, the Samoan, the Tongan, and the New 

 Zealand. The number of letters required to form an alphabet in each of 

 these dialects is about the same ; although while one, as the New Zealand, 

 retains the ^, the Hervey dismisses it ; for the Noav Zealand wli, the Tahitian, 

 Samoan, and Tongan have/; for the New Zealand w, the Austral and Mar- 

 quesan have V. The nasal New Zealand sound ng is also used in the Hervey, 

 Samoan, and Tongan, but it is rejected from the Tahitian, Sandwich, Mar- 

 quesan, and Austral. The New Zealand h is also rejected by the Samoan, 



* By the writer, in 1835. 



t The dialect of Raxotonga, one of the Hervey group, in 160° W. long., may also be 

 here included. 



50 



