Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/409

Rh of them are accessible. In spite of numerous attempts to decipher the ideographic pictographs, the efforts have as yet been almost unavailing. No other similar form of script is known from the Pacific Islands, unless we admit some analogy in the hieroglyphs of the Chatham Islands, referred to by Dr. H. O. Forbes, or in the geographically still more remote script described by Mr. J. M. Brown from the island of Uleai in the Western Caroline Islands. This latter script is syllabic, whereas that of Easter Island is ideographic, and, moreover, the signs employed in the former do not suggest any near relationship to the latter.

My object now is to call attention to the fact that many of the ideographic signs in the Rapanuian script find striking counterparts in designs still employed in the Solomon Islands. Additional evidence is thus forthcoming of a culture-link between this Melanesian group and Easter Island. I have not had time to examine critically all the signs used in the Easter Island script, but I select a few which appear to me to be significant.

One thing is very noticeable. Of all the bird-symbols which are so very abundantly represented in the script under a variety of forms, by far the greater proportion clearly represent the frigate-bird (as indicated by the strongly hooked beak) and not the Manu tara, or sacred tern. The birds are variously depicted, some more or less realistically, others conventionally and often with human attributes, and I give the following characteristic examples, together with analogous (perhaps homologous) designs from the Solomon Islands.

Pictograph of frigate-bird with outstretched wings in attitude of flight, Easter Island, for comparison with