Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ing in the roaming habits of the chief Malay tribes; and this is proved by the fact that we
find actual modern words of the Malay and Javanese languages in use in Polynesia, so little
disguised by peculiarities of pronunciation as to be easily recognisable—not mere Malay
roots only to be detected by the elaborate researches of the philologist, as would certainly
have been the case had their introduction been as remote as the origin of a very distinct
race—a race as different from the Malay in mental and moral, as it is in physical characters.
As bearing upon this question it is important to point out the harmony which exists,
between the line of separation of the human races of the Archipelago and that of the animal
productions of the same country, which I have already so fully explained and illustrated.
The dividing lines do not, it is true, exactly agree; but I think it is a remarkable fact, and
something more than a mere coincidence, that they should traverse the same district and ap-
proach each other so closely as they do. If, however, I am right in my supposition that the
region where the dividing line of the Indo-Malayan and Austro-Malayan regions of zoology
can now be drawn, was formerly occupied by a much wider sea than at present, and if man
existed on the earth at that period, we shall see good reason why the races inhabiting the
Asiatic and Pacific areas should now meet and partially intermingle in the vicinity of that di-
viding line.
It has recently been maintained by Professor Huxley,
*
that the Papuans are more closely
allied to the negroes of Africa than to any other race. The resemblance both in physical and
mental characteristics had often struck myself, but the difficulties in the way of accepting it
as probable or possible, have hitherto prevented me from giving full weight to those resemb-
lances. Geographical, zoological, and ethnological considerations render it almost certain,
that if these two races ever had a common origin, it could only have been at a period far
more remote than any which has yet been assigned to the antiquity of the human race. And
even if their unity could be proved, it would in no way affect my argument for the close af-
finity of the Papuan and Polynesian races, and the radical distinctness of both from the
Malay.
Polynesia is pre-eminently an area of subsidence, and its great wide-spread groups of
coral-reefs mark out the position of former continents and islands. The rich and varied, yet
strangely isolated productions of Australia and New Guinea, also indicate an extensive con-
tinent where such specialized forms were developed. The races of men now inhabiting these
countries are, therefore, most probably the descendants of the races which inhabited these
continents and islands. This is the most simple and natural supposition to make. And if we
find any signs of direct affinity between the inhabitants of any other part of the world and
those of Polynesia, it by no means follows that the latter were derived from the former. For
