PREFACE. 



In arranging the Ethnological collections in the Bishop Museum the difficulty presented 

 itself at the outset of a very extensive synonomy of the islands comprised in the region of the Pacific 

 from which these collections are drawn. The orthography was largely undetermined, native names 

 of islands had generally given place to the names of saints or of the vessels which carried their sup- 

 posed discoverers, and as determinations of longitude are, even at the present day, very uncertain in 

 this ocean, islands were discovered, lost and rediscovered, — as the Solomon Islands were lost for 

 two centuries — and the rediscoverer renamed the bit of land or rock that he found seemingly adrift 

 in the mighty waste of waters. 



To show the true relation of the various groups and solitary islands in the Pacific the Director 

 constructed with great care upon the wall of the Polynesian Hall of the Museum a chart extending 

 from 130 3 East to no° West longitude, and from -the Tropic of Cancer to 45° South in latitude, occu- 

 pying a wall space eleven feet by twenty. The names given to the islands there represented were in 

 all cases the native names where such were known to exist; where there were no aboriginal inhabi- 

 tants (as at Wake Island), or where the aborigines had disappeared (as at Pitcairn Island), the 

 name imposed by the first discoverer was preferred. This led to some difficulty as names familiar to 

 some were replaced by less familiar terms: Penrhyn became again the original Tongareva; one Pes- 

 cadores became Bikini, another Rongelab; Sandwich Island returned to its aboriginal Vate. As it 

 was impracticable to cover the chart with synonyms the best way seemed to be to print a list of all 

 the names generally applied in charts or voyages in the form of an index, that not only the student 

 might understand the labels attached to the ethnological specimens and groups, but the general visitor 

 to the Museum be able to find an island appearing on the chart under an unfamiliar name. 



This course appeared convenient, if not necessary, for those who had the arrangement of the 

 Museum in charge that there should be no confusion or variation in the nomenclature of localities; 

 that consistency, at least, if not absolute accuracy might prevail. 



In the present state of our knowledge of the geography of the Pacific Ocean, it is not possible 

 to place accurately the position of the known islands of this ocean, still less is it possible to go beyond 

 conjecture in the identification of many of the discoveries of the earlier voyagers. It has not been 

 possible to obtain the true native name in all cases, and indeed in some of the larger islands, as 

 New Guinea, there seems to have been no collective name for the numerous districts comprising the 

 island, and doubtless in a few cases the name of a portion has been applied to the whole. Especially 

 is this the case in the "ring-atolls" where the name of a prominent islet sometimes stands for the whole 

 group. As to the orthography, even the missionaries who have acquired more or less knowledge of the 

 vernacular, do not always agree as in the case of Jaluit which some spell Jaluij. But if one were to 

 wait for perfect knowledge before coming to the public there would be little enough printed, and it 

 has seemed best to print the following pages with all their imperfections, trusting that the better 



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