intelligent foreign traveller, who, though not a professed Ethnologist yet as writing under the influence of his own impressions and personal observation, seems to me to have given the best solution of a difficulty which other writers had acknowledged without being able to explain it. I proceed at once to detail his views, and propose afterwards to show from other writers who have corroborated his statements, how much they have borne out his conclusions. He says,
"The connexion between the languages of all or at least of the greater part of the islands termed Oceania puts it beyond doubt that ethnographers may consider them as of only one people to whom they give the name of Malay. This fact proves that they have had a common origin or had intimate communications with one another. The resemblance in the form of their vessels, houses, and utensils, and in their customs particularly that of saluting with the nose, corroborates this assertion.
In this region there are many varieties of inhabitants who may be comprehended in two great classes, one a people of pale brown hue, nose broad and sunk below the forehead, face broad, hair lank, facial angle acute; and the other which has all the distinctive characteristics of the negro race. This latter is chiefly found in Papuasia or New Guinea, but also in various other islands and on the mountains of many of those inhabited by the former class.
In the Philippine islands both classes are existing. The first known by the name of Indians to whom should be added the Igorrotes or Infidels who are of the same caste in the savage state; the others are the Ahetas or Negritos. The languages of these two classes are not distinct but the same; I mean to say of the same fount or root. One of these two races must be native or aboriginal, the other foreign and conquering.
There are islands occupied exclusively by these Negroes, and there are found further the same people on the heights of other islands surrounded by the caste with lank hair. This caste cannot have been very long time in their present abodes, since the tropical climate has not had time to exercise its influence upon their hair and crisp it. All which seems to prove that the region was originally inhabited by the former class, the Negroes, and that afterwards being invaded in some parts by another people, they receded, taking refuge on the mountains where the usurpers did not follow them.
The identity of the languages which the two races in question speak, the resemblance of color, because even though
