estimated. The languages of Polynesia are easy to smatter, though

hard to speak with elegance. And they are extremely similar, so

that a person who has a tincture of one or two may risk, not

without hope, an attempt upon the others.

And again, not only is Polynesian easy to smatter, but interpreters

abound. Missionaries, traders, and broken white folk living on the

bounty of the natives, are to be found in almost every isle and

hamlet; and even where these are unserviceable, the natives

themselves have often scraped up a little English, and in the

French zone (though far less commonly) a little French-English, or

an efficient pidgin, what is called to the westward 'Beach-la-Mar,'

comes easy to the Polynesian; it is now taught, besides, in the

schools of Hawaii; and from the multiplicity of British ships, and

the nearness of the States on the one hand and the colonies on the

other, it may be called, and will almost certainly become, the

tongue of the Pacific. I will instance a few examples. I met in

Majuro a Marshall Island boy who spoke excellent English; this he

had learned in the German firm in Jaluit, yet did not speak one

word of German. I heard from a gendarme who had taught school in

Rapa-iti that while the children had the utmost difficulty or

reluctance to learn French, they picked up English on the wayside,

and as if by accident. On one of the most out-of-the-way atolls in

the Carolines, my friend Mr. Benjamin Hird was amazed to find the

lads playing cricket on the beach and talking English; and it was

in English that the crew of the Janet Nicoll, a set of black boys

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