CORRESPONDENCE.
Melanesian Influence in Easter Island.
In a late number of Folk-Lore (vol. xxviii. p. 356) Henry Balfour contributed a very interesting and suggestive paper on Melanesian influence in Easter Island; I now offer additional evidence in support of his hypothesis.
L. Choris gives an illustration of a canoe from Easter Island with a double outrigger composed of two booms, the ends of which are tied directly to the float (Voy. pitt. autour du monde, 1822, pi. x. fig. 1); this has been copied by H. Stolpe (Ymer, 1883, p. 177, fig. 9). G. Friederici says that the double outrigger certainly occurred on the Marquesas at the time of the Mendaña Expedition (Mitt, aus den Deutschen Schutzgebieten, Erg-heft, Nr. 5, 1912, p. 243). G. Brown states that the beautiful carvel-built sailing canoes of the Samoan Islands had an outrigger "on both sides" (Melanesians and Polynesians, 1910, p. 350). So far as I am aware, this type of canoe has nowhere else been reported in past or recent times from Polynesia. On turning to Melanesia, we find canoes with double outriggers in the extreme north of New Guinea as far east as Cape d'Urville and in the Torres Straits district, but this is another story. A canoe of the Easter Island type is found in the Nissan group (Sir Charles Hardy Islands) between Bougainville and New Ireland (F. Krause, quoting R. Uhlig, Jahrbuch d. städl. Mus. f. Volkerkunde zu Leipzig, i. 1906 (1907), p. 133, fig. 101). Guppy says that the general absence of outriggers is characteristic of the Solomons group, and adds, "For sea-passages, greater stability is sometimes given to the large canoes of the straits, by temporarily fitting them with an outrigger on each side, in the form
