Compared to Europeans, Arabs, Persians, Tartars,
Bermans, and Siamese, the Indian islanders
must be considered as an ill-looking race of people.
In person they are by no means so handsome as
the Chinese nations, who resemble the latter, but
they have much better features. These notions of
beauty are not relative, for the standard of beauty
among the Polynesian tribes is nearly the same
as among ourselves. The man that is considered
handsome, or the woman that is pointed out as
beautiful by an European, are the same that are
allowed to be so by their own countrymen. Even
with respect to colour, there is not that wide difference
which might be expected in our tastes.
They admire fairness of complexion, though naturally
enough not the sickly hue of the European,
the only form in which it is presented to their observation.
They admire the complexion of the
p. 325, 326.—Linschoten’s account of the Javanese is also tolerably
faithful.—“ These Javans,” says he, “ are of verie
fretfull and obstinate nature, of colour much like the Malay-
ers, brown, and not much unlike the men of Brasilia ; strong
and well set, big limmed, flatte faces, broad thicke cheekes,
great eyé-browes, smal eyes, little beard, not past three or
four hayres upon the upper-lippe and the chinne; the hayre
on their heades very thyn and short, yet as blacke ?.s pitehe,
whose picture is to be seen by the picture of the Malayen of
Malacca, because they dwell and trafficke much together.”—
Linschoten’s Voyages, p. 34*.
half breed, and the Malays in their poetry often
panegyrise a beauty of this class. The standard of
perfection in colour is virgin gold, and as an European
lover compares the bosom of his mistress
to the whiteness of snow, the East Insular lover
compares that of his to the yellowness of the precious
metal. It is with the view of attaining this
desired complexion, that the Javanese, when in full
dress, smear their bodies with a yellow cosmetic.
The complexion is scarce ever clear, and a blush is
hardly at any time discernible in it. This, however,
only distinguishes them from the European
race, and not from any of the Asiatic races.
The Indian islanders most resemble in person
and complexion the people of Siam and Ava, but
they differ remarkably even from these, and are, in
short, a very distinct people, very like among themselves,
but very unlike all other people.
The Papua, * or woolly-haired race, of the
Indian islands, is a dwarf African negro. A
full grown male brought from the mountains of
Queda, and examined with great care by my
friend Major Macinnes, proved to be no more
than four feet nine inches high. Among those
brought from the other extremity of the Ar-
Theword Papua is a corruption of Pua-pua, the common
term by which the brown-complexioned tribes designate the
whole negro race.