5 OE 
LANGUAGES OF PONAPE AND HAWAII. 431 
graphical position, for there are other islands more populous and 
of greater commercial importance, but rather in the language, 
which is in vocables the fullest, and in grammar the most 
complete. 
Micronesia is situated in the eastern portion of the great 
Malayan island realm, lying there as in a broad gateway through 
which it has received the population which now covers its sunny 
atolls and volcanic islands. It embraces three important groups 
of islands, the Caroline, Marshall, and Gilbert, with not a few 
widely separated coral islets. A fourth group, that of the 
Ladrones, would be added had not its pure native population, 
and so its language, been exterminated. The enumeration of 
these different groups may suffice for any more definite deseription 
of the whole archipelago, yet if more be needed, we may say that 
the whole is grouped between 2° 8. lat. and 20° N. and 130° and 
178° E. long. Within these lines two important tongues are 
Tepresented : the one Polynesian which may be called the Poly- 
nesio-Micronesian, and which finds its habitat mainly in the 
Gilbert Group, taking in some atolls near the line, with perhaps 
@ preponderating influence in the volcanic islands of Yap, the 
Palaus and the Ladrones. The other may be called Malayo- 
Micronesian, and is represented mainly by the dialects spoken in 
the Marshall Group and the islands lying west of this, and 
throughout the larger part of the Carolines, from Kusaie to Uoleai. 
A paper prepared some time since treated of the relationship of 
the Ponape to the Malay tongue.’ In this paper it is proposed to 
take the same Ponape dialect and note what are its relations to 
the Polynesian tongue, and especially to that spoken by the 
Hawaiian people. Probably the larger number of those to whom 
this question may be put as to what is this relationship would 
reply, ‘Just none at all, or only that of the most nebulous sort.’ 
They would reply that in the migration of the people either from 
fast to west, or from west to east, there is no connection between 
heey two languages. One is Polynesian, the other Micronesian, 
1 This has apparently been lost. 
