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 recent
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
mental 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- Hew 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 readers
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
development 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 unnecessary1.
In such a state every man would have a sufficiently
well-balanced intellectual organization, to understand the