"Though no trace of their blood is left, New Guinea must at one time have been a halting place in the migration. Papua it is called, and one finds the word current in Polynesia, meaning a garden, a rich land. The natives of New Guinea are as unlike the people of the eastern Pacific, I should say, as the average American or Englishman, and yet throughout New Guinea there is a most curious cropping out of Polynesian words, pointing to a very ancient intercourse between the races. Consider the word for woman among the Polynesians. In Rarotonga, it is _vaine_; in Tahiti, _vahine_; in the Marquesas, _vehine_; in Hawaii, _wahine_; in Samoa, _fafine_. The same root runs through the dialects of Papua. In Motu, woman is _habine_; in Kerepunu, _vavine_; in Aroma, _babine_; and in Motumotu it is _ua_, which in this part of the Pacific means, variously, female, seed, and rain. I could cite you dozens of similar examples. Now and then one comes across something that sets one's imagination to work ... as you must know, the word for sun in the islands is _ra_, but in Tahiti they have another word, _mahana_. In New Guinea, thirty-five hundred miles away, and with all Melanesia between, the tribes of the South Cape call the sun _mahana_. What a puzzle it is!
"Though it may be the merest coincidence, that _ra_ has a flavor of Egypt. I wonder if there could be a connection? I used to know a girl in Tahiti whose strange and rather beautiful name--hereditary as far back as the records of her family went--was that of a queen of Egypt who ruled many hundreds of years before Christ. But I mustn't ride my hobby too fast.
"It is a pity you can't stop on Ahu Ahu for a time--there are not many islands so unspoiled. I've grown very fond of the place; I doubt if I ever leave it permanently. If you are interested in ghosts, you had better change your mind. I have a fine collection here; the house is built on the site of a tumble-down _marae_. There is our white rooster, the spirit of an old chief, which appears during the new moon--perfectly harmless and friendly, but the people rather dread him. Then we have a ghostly pig, very bad indeed; and a pair of malignant women, who walk about at night with arms and long hair entwined, and are suspected of ghastly appetites. I shall not say whether or not I have seen any of these; perhaps it is living too much alone, but I am not so skeptical as I was...."