CHAPTER II. 
THE SISSANO COMMUNITY. 
It may be asked, and that not improperly, why we approach the 
problems of Melanesia through so exiguous a medium as a mere frag- 
ment of the speech of Sissano when we have the more considerable 
vocabularies of the Bongu, the Tami, the Pala, and the Mota. 
A determining reason inheres in the foregoing statement. We 
have dictionaries of a few of the languages called Melanesian. In 
the period, less than thirty years, in which these languages have been 
studied through the methods of comparison, there has arisen a cer- 
tain mass of assumptions which in the passage from hand to hand 
have tended to become fixed as prejudices. Just because the Sissano 
_ is wholly new, that it is presented to us in no more than the record 
stage and without the attempt to adjust its twigs upon a family tree, 
these conditions make it all the more valuable. Inasmuch as we shall 
engage upon the study of the nature and possibly the source of that 
element of speech within the Melanesian area which exhibits the appear- 
ance of kinship with other languages, we shall find our attitude of 
inquiry in a better poise when we are dealing with fresh material. 
The conclusions which we may derive from the newly acquired data 
will thus serve as standard for the critical examination of the conclu- 
sions at which earlier students have arrived in the study of other data. 
The extent of the Sissano material at present falls below the amount 
offered in the dictionaries mentioned in the foregoing paragraph. We 
are to examine but 120 vocables of Sissano speech; yet even that 
scanty figure is more than half as much again as that upon which Cod- 
rington erected the study of comparative Melanesian philology, falls 
but 34 items below the limit of Ray’s material, and approximates three- 
quarters of the sum of Friederici’s material. On this score, therefore, 
it is entitled to rank with the work of these authorities. 
The geography of the Sissano communities establishes this speech 
as in a position of peculiar importance. It will be recalled that the 
great island of New Guinea is bisected politically by the meridian of 
141° E. All that lies west of that line is a possession of the Nether- 
lands. The eastern half is again partitioned by a mathematical 
boundary through untrodden waste of mountain and jungle. This 
boundary leaves the Netherlands line at the parallel of 5° S., and 
when the unknown land is explored will be drawn in a straight line 
to the corner formed by the intersection of 6° S. with 114° E.; from 
this corner it continues to the intersection of 8° S. with 147° E.; thence 
along the parallel of 8° into the sea south of the Bismarck Archipelago. 
South of this line is the British Possession of Papua; north of it lies 
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