prominent: the eye is smaller than in the Australians, and the pupil is of a mixed
greenish and brownish tint: the nose is excessively flat, the alee being thin and
depressed above, hut below disgustingly ppen, thus corresponding in lateral extent
with the wide mouth; the latter projects like a snout, with thick lips of a bright
red color; and the chin is almost square, with a very scanty heard. Their lower
extremities are thin, long and disproportioned, in which respect they resemble the
Australians.
The more remarkable communities of this family are the following. The
people of Van Diemen’s Land have the preceding characteristics in the extreme,
although their country is as cold as Ireland. So also the natives of the Great
Andaman Island, who are of small stature, with slender limbs, protuberant
abdomen, high shoulders, and large heads, exhibiting, in the language of Colonel
Symes, a horrid mixture of famine and ferocity.* Forster compares the people
of Mallicolo to monkeys, and asserts that he had seen no Negroes in whom the
forehead was so depressed. This family is also found in the numerous islands
adjacent to New Guinea, as New Britain, Admiralty Island, the Hermit Islands,
&c. In Santa Cruz they are said to be less intensely black, and to have large
foreheads. They also inhabit Tanna and Erromanga, Vanikoro, Viti, New Caledonia
and many other islands; and there is every reason to believe that they are
the aboriginal inhabitants of these various localities.
The P apuas. It has already been remarked, that the term P a p u a has been
generally applied to all the black races of the Indian Archipelago; but Quoi and
Gaimard have recently established the fact that the true Papuas are a hybrid
family of Malays and Oceanic Negroes. These Papuas are of the middle stature,
and generally pretty well formed, yet they occasionally have attenuated limbs.
Their skin is not black, but a dark brown; and their hair is very black, neither
lank nor crisped, but woolly, rather fine, and so much frizzled as to give the
appearance of enormous magnitude to the head; and they comb out these wiry
locks in such manner as to make the mass three feet in diameter. They have
but little beard: the nose is sensibly flattened, the lips thick, and the cheek bones
large; but there is nothing disgusting in their physiognomy.f The Papua skulls
figured in Freycinct’s Voyage, have the broad face of the Malay, and the whole
head is somewhat rounded, with large parietal protuberances.!
* Embassy to Ava, p. 130.
t Voy. de l’Uranie, Atlas, PI. 1 and 2.
t Bory, L’Homme, I, p. 305,
The moral and intellectual character of these people appears to differ in
nothing from that of the genuine Negroes by whom they are surrounded.
The views of the French naturalists as to the origin of the Papuas are
strongly confirmed by the physical characters of the Confusos of Brazil, who have
been described in a former part of this work.* The true Papuas are for the most
part confined to the northern coast of New Guinea, and the islands of Waigou,
Sallawatty, Gammen and Battenta.f The people of Bougainville’s island, who are
darker and of more repulsive physiognomy, appear to belong to the same family.
With them may also be classed the inhabitants of Solomon’s isles, and those of
Taomaco and Australia del Espiritu Santo.J
21. THE AUSTRALIAN FAMILY.
The natives of New Holland are of the full stature, with broad chests, thin
bodies, and long, slender limbs. Their usual color is either black or very dark
brown, yet many of the women are as light colored as mulattoes. The face,
which is ugly in the extreme, projects greatly from the head, and the mouth is
particularly prominent owing to its width, and the great size of the lips. The
nose is flat and broad, and the nostrils expanded. A deep sinus separates the nose
from the forehead; the frontal ridges often overhang the eyes, while the forehead
itself is low, and slopes rapidly to the top of the head. Dampier remarks of them
that they hold up their heads and half close their eyes, as if looking at the sun;
which he supposes is done to keep off the multitudes of insects by which they are
surrounded. Their hair is longer than in the Negro, coarse and often much
frizzled, yet rarely woolly. § They are passionately fond of war; and as their
fierce and vindictive tempers seldom allow them to pardon an enemy, there is a
perpetual provocation to feud and bloodshed. Even their courtship, if it merits
that name, consists in a violent abduction of the object of desire, and their women
are treated throughout life with a brutality perhaps unparallelled in any other
country. They are to the last degree filthy in their persons and gluttonous in
their eating; and their dances betray the licentiousness of their morals. ||f
It is not probable that these people, as a body, are capable of any other than
* Page 85. | :Lesson, Voy. de la Coquille. Zool. I, p. 87.
t Prichard, Phys. Hist of Man, I, p. 377-380.
§ Breton, N. South Wales, p. 1S7.—Barrington, Botany Bay, p. 63.
11 Breton, p. 202.
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