The Mafulu | Page 6

the Ufafa river as far as Mt. Eleia, and thence along the Ukalama river to the Kuni boundary. The Ukalama river is not shown in the Geographical Society's map; but I may say that it is shown in the Fathers' map as rising in Mt. Eleia, and flowing thence in a south-easterly direction, and so joining the St. Joseph river close to Dilava. The broken red line upon my map does not appear in the Fathers' map, but has been added by me to indicate what, I understand, the Fathers believe to be a continued boundary, so far as ascertained, of the Fuyuge linguistic area, called by them the Mafulu area, to which I am about to draw attention.
The term Mafulu is the Kuni pronunciation of Mambule, which is the name, as used by themselves, of the people who live in a group of villages within and near the north-westerly corner of the area of the Fuyuge-speaking people, whose Papuan language, so far as ascertained, appears, subject to local dialectal differences, to be the same, and may, I was informed, be regarded as one common language throughout the Fuyuge area.
The Fathers of the Mission have adopted the name Mafulu in a wider sense, as including all the people with whom they have come in contact of the Fuyuge-speaking area; and, though my investigations, which form the subject-matter of this book, have been conducted only in the neighbourhood of Mafulu itself, I was assured that, so far as the Fathers have been able to ascertain, all these Fuyuge people not only have similar languages, but also are substantially similar in physique and in culture. My observations concerning the Mafulu people may therefore, if this statement is correct, be regarded as applying, not only to the inhabitants of the portion of the north-westerly corner of the Fuyuge area in which the Mafulu group of villages is placed, but to those of the whole of the north-westerly portion of the area, and generally in a greater or less degree of accuracy to those of the northerly and north-easterly parts of the area, and possibly the southerly ones also.
The boundaries of this Fuyuge-speaking area can hardly be regarded as definitely ascertained; and the discrepancies, even as regards the courses of the rivers and the positions of the mountains, which appear in the few available maps make it difficult to deal with the question. The area, so far as actually ascertained by the Fathers of the Mission, roughly speaking, covers, and seems to extend also some distance to the south or south-west of a triangle, the western apex of which is the junction of the river Kea with the river Aduala (a tributary of the St. Joseph), [2] whose north-eastern apex is Mt. Albert Edward, and whose south-eastern apex is Mt. Scratchley. It includes the valley of the Aduala river and its streams (except those flowing into it from the north in the region of the western apex of the triangle) within its northern boundary, and the valley of the upper Vanapa river and its rivers and streams in the neighbourhood of its eastern boundary; but this eastern boundary has been found to extend also so as to include the upper valley of the river Chirima. How far the area extends to the south or south-west of the triangle above mentioned appears to be uncertain.
The linguistic area to the north of the Mafulu or Fuyuge people is that of the Ambo people, who are somewhat similar in appearance to the Mafulu, and whose language is also Papuan, and, though differing from the Mafulu language, is, I was told, somewhat similar to it in grammatical construction and as regards a few of its words. The area to the west is that of the Kuni people, whose language is Melanesian, but whose ordinary modes of life are, I was informed, more like those of the Mafulu than are those of the Papuan-speaking Ambo. The areas to the east and south cannot be so definitely stated, but are dealt with below.
As regards these Ambo people I may, in view of divergences of names which appear in maps, explain that Ambo is a contraction of Ambore, and is the name given to the people by their Mafulu neighbours, whilst Afoa is the name given to them by the Kuni people, and is adopted in the Geographical Society's map. [3] As regards the Kuni people, their name is the one adopted by themselves.
Concerning the boundaries of the Fuyuge linguistic area as above indicated, and the people whose districts adjoin that area, I propose here to draw attention to four names, and to refer to some observations bearing on the subject of the probable Fuyuge boundary which are to be found in existing literature.
The term Kovio, though primarily the name of