Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
every physical, mental, and moral character; and more detailed research, continued for eight
years, satisfied me that under these two forms, as types, the whole of the peoples of the
Malay Archipelago and Polynesia could be classified. On drawing the line which separates
these races, it is found to come near to that which divides the zoological regions, but some-
what eastward of it; a circumstance which appears to me very significant of the same causes
having influenced the distribution of mankind that have determined the range of other anim-
al forms.
The reason why exactly the same line does not limit both is sufficiently intelligible. Man
has means of traversing the sea which animals do not possess; and a superior race has power
to press out or assimilate an inferior one. The maritime enterprise and higher civilization of
the Malay races have enabled them to overrun a portion of the adjacent region, in which
they have entirely supplanted the indigenous inhabitants if it ever possessed any; and to
spread much of their language, their domestic animals, and their customs far over the Pacif-
ic, into islands where they have but slightly, or not at all, modified the physical or moral
characteristics of the people.
I believe, therefore, that all the peoples of the various islands can be grouped either with
the Malays or the Papuans; and that these two have no traceable affinity to each other. I be-
lieve, further, that all the races east of the line I have drawn have more affinity for each oth-
er than they have for any of the races west of that line;—that, in fact, the Asiatic races in-
clude the Malays, and all have a continental origin, while the Pacific races, including all to
the east of the former (except perhaps some in the Northern Pacific), are derived, not from
any existing continent, but from lands which now exist or have recently existed in the Pacif-
ic Ocean. These preliminary observations will enable the reader better to apprehend the im-
portance I attach to the details of physical form or moral character, which I shall give in de-
scribing the inhabitants of many of the islands.
