CHAPTER X.
CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE HISTORY AND PHYSICAL
CHARACTERS OF THE OCEANIC NATIONS««
S e c t io n I.—Remarks on the History o f the Black Raees.
T he history of the Oceanic nations is yet defective in one
great and essential particular. I alludecto the almost total
want of information respecting the languages of the black
races.. We are far from having reached the same point in
regard to these nations and theirs (languages which the
American philologers have attained in regard to the languages
of the New World. We know not whether the aggregate
of these idioms, like the American tongues, belong, to one
system or great family of languages,, analogous to each other
in the leading principles of their grammatical construction.
The only considerable department of the Kelsenonesian races
of whose idioms, some general grammatical knowledge has
been gained are; the Australian tribes in the southern part of
New Holland. From the late researches of Mr. Threlkeld,
Captain Gray, and other writers above cited, we have learned
that the dialects of the Australian tribes (for it is probable
that the northern tribes belong to the same family as the
southern) form a system of languages in many respects
peculiar, In what may be termed the merely organic peculiarities,
viz* the absence and presence of certain elements of
articulation and the mode of utterance, these languages are
allied, as we have seen, to the Polynesian, but the analogy
doeS not appear to extend further. Of the Papua languages
not one has been made known in its structure and grammatical
relations,*, for we cannot, venture to term the Fijians. Papuas.
The Fijian language, as we have seen, turns out to be Polynesian.
The Papua vocabularies which have been collected
contain Polynesian words, but these may be words which
have been^dppted by the ruder Papuas from their more
civilised. Polynesian neighbours. Wq.*tiave -on the whole no
proof of affinity between the Eels&Mrifesiatf- races beyond the
uncertain probability of.tjKpir having^iginat'ed from the same
extreme border of the Asiatic..continent, and, perhaps some
resemblance in their mannemsjand physical 'constitution'.
We must for the present look upon thehfack races as the
aborigines of Eelsenonesia,—tjiat is, as the immemorial and
primitivpinhabitants. There.is . no. reason, to doubt that they
were Spread over the: austral islands Iong'hfefbre >the-Sam§ or
the contiguous regions were approached by, the Malay
Polynesians. We cannot say* definitely how far! back this
will carry1 Us, but as| the distant colcmi$ati*«©f the* Polynesians'
probably happened before the Island of Java received
arts and civilisation from Hindustan, it must be supposed to
have ..preceded. bysorhemges the Javan era ofRataVa Guru>
and therefore to have happened long before the Ghristian era.
piJjBBGTiON.J 1 1 ^ 0 » ■ the Physical Characters-of tM’'
Oceanic Races. '
On surveying collectively the whole body of the Oceanic
nations, we discover among the < widely dispersed tribes of
which they consist almost every physical variety Gf the human
species that exists on the face of the earth. WemuM except
only the type whiehr belongs to the Esquimaux and other
Hyperborean races, to whose climate' nO part 0f;:Oceanica
approximates in temperature and other fphysicUl Conditions.
There are among the Oceanic nations some tribes whose
complexion and form? of body, and features and mental
qualities remind us of the mofet. degraded of the African
* The Rev.. T. Heath, a missionary who Has resided in the Island of Tanna,
has composed a grammar of that idiom, but he has not published'it.