reminded me continually of the days of Lovat and Struan.

Hospitality, tact, natural fine manners, and a touchy punctilio,

are common to both races: common to both tongues the trick of

dropping medial consonants. Here is a table of two widespread

Polynesian words:-

House. Love.

Tahitian FARE AROHA

New Zealand WHARE

Samoan FALE TALOFA

Manihiki FALE ALOHA

Hawaiian HALE ALOHA

Marquesan HA'E KAOHA

The elision of medial consonants, so marked in these Marquesan

instances, is no less common both in Gaelic and the Lowland Scots.

Stranger still, that prevalent Polynesian sound, the so-called

catch, written with an apostrophe, and often or always the

gravestone of a perished consonant, is to be heard in Scotland to

this day. When a Scot pronounces water, better, or bottle--wa'er,

be'er, or bo'le--the sound is precisely that of the catch; and I

think we may go beyond, and say, that if such a population could be

isolated, and this mispronunciation should become the rule, it

might prove the first stage of transition from t to k, which is the

disease of Polynesian languages. The tendency of the Marquesans,

however, is to urge against consonants, or at least on the very

common letter l, a war of mere extermination. A hiatus is

agreeable to any Polynesian ear; the ear even of the stranger soon

grows used to these barbaric voids; but only in the Marquesan will

you find such names as Haaii and Paaaeua, when each individual

vowel must be separately uttered.

These points of similarity between a South Sea people and some of

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