Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
as, when a Pacific continent existed, the whole geography of the earth's surface would prob-
ably be very different from what it now is, the present continents may not then have risen
above the ocean, and, when they were formed at a subsequent epoch, may have derived
some of their inhabitants from the Polynesian area itself. It is undoubtedly true that there are
proofs of extensive migrations among the Pacific islands, which have led to community of
language from the Sandwich group to New Zealand; but there are no proofs whatever of re-
cent migration from any surrounding country to Polynesia, since there is no people to be
found elsewhere sufficiently resembling the Polynesian race in their chief physical and men-
tal characteristics.
If the past history of these varied races is obscure and uncertain, the future is no less so.
The true Polynesians, inhabiting the farthest isles of the Pacific, are no doubt doomed to an
early extinction. But the more numerous Malay race seems well adapted to survive as the
cultivator of the soil, even when his country and government have passed into the hands of
Europeans. If the tide of colonization should be turned to New Guinea, there can be little
doubt of the early extinction of the Papuan race. A warlike and energetic people, who will
not submit to national slavery or to domestic servitude, must disappear before the white man
as surely as do the wolf and the tiger.
I have now concluded my task. I have given, in more or less detail, a sketch of my eight
years' wanderings among the largest and the most luxuriant islands which adorn our earth's
surface. I have endeavoured to convey my impressions of their scenery, their vegetation,
their animal productions, and their human inhabitants. I have dwelt at some length on the
varied and interesting problems they offer to the student of nature. Before bidding my read-
ers farewell, I wish to make a few observations on a subject of yet higher interest and deeper
importance, which the contemplation of savage life has suggested, and on which I believe
that the civilized can learn something from the savage man.
We most of us believe that we, the higher races, have progressed and are progressing. If
so, there must be some state of perfection, some ultimate goal, which we may never reach,
but to which all true progress must bring us nearer. What is this ideally perfect social state
towards which mankind ever has been, and still is tending? Our best thinkers maintain, that
it is a state of individual freedom and self-government, rendered possible by the equal de-
velopment and just balance of the intellectual, moral, and physical parts of our nature,—a
state in which we shall each be so perfectly fitted for a social existence, by knowing what is
right, and at the same time feeling an irresistible impulse to do what we know to be right,
that all laws and all punishments shall be unnecessary. In such a state every man would have
a sufficiently well-balanced intellectual organization, to understand the moral law in all its
