MIGRATION DRIFT AND ERRATICS. 169 
official books might balance, there was none to voice an effective pro- 
test when the uncomprehended chattel was left upon some beach which 
might be hostile, which at its best was an alien land and the abode of 
utter strangers. This mask from New Ireland is as gay as the plumage 
of bright birds can make it; it flashes when the sunlight plays upon it. 
It is quite as wonderful a museum piece as one could imagine. It is as 
marvelous a contribution to the recognition of the art hunger of these 
primitive savages as it is possible to devise. But all this fades into 
insignificance alongside its appeal to our sympathies. It is the handi- 
work of a New Guinea man in New Ireland who through some miracle 
has escaped the oven which was the common end of such misplaced 
humanity in the dereliction of the labor trade. He had toiled through 
his years of servitude at harder labor than comported with his joy of 
living; he had been fed on foreign viands and not overfed; at last he was 
on his homeward way and in the end was set upon a distant island and 
his last hope of home perished on those rippled sands as the labor- 
trader’s boat pulled off unheeding his uncomprehended protestations. 
How long he lived none may know; he has left but this record that in 
New Ireland among strangers he followed his bent and added to the 
ornament of carving that which really gladdened his life, the decoration 
of the feathers of the birds of the air, he more homeless than they. 
At this point this study of the clubs of the central Pacific properly 
closes. The specimens have been grouped into types; the source of 
each type has been investigated. So far as has proved practicable the 
genesis of the several type forms has been worked out. ‘The character 
of the ornament and its significance have been studied. In this con- 
cluding chapter the material evidence of the artifacts themselves has 
been assembled to the proof of the nature and direction of migration of 
Polynesians in the Pacific, both in the ancient period of the first migra- 
tion and in the modern period of chance dispersion under conditions 
which have arisen in opposition to the smooth course of the life of the 
peoples of the Pacific. 
