Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By the Late Captain Owen Stanley - Volume 2 by John MacGillivray (the dot read aloud TXT) 📖

many, perhaps all of the appearances which they present may be satisfactorily accounted for by the application of Mr. Darwin's theory. We have only to presume the whole of the Archipelago to have once formed part of New Guinea-a supposition highly probable in itself (suggested even by a careful examination of the large charts) and strengthened by the total absence of signs of volcanic agency in what the theory in question would require to be an area of subsidence as opposed to those of elevation, such as are known to exist in parts of New Guinea.

ETHNOLOGY OF NEW GUINEA.

The ethnology of New Guinea is involved in so much confusion and obscurity for the want of sufficient data, that even with the aid of some additional recently acquired information bearing upon the subject, I wish the following brief remarks to be regarded more as probable assumptions than as views the correctness of which admits of demonstration. Besides, to give all the proofs, such as they are, would cause much repetition of what has been already stated above.

I must premise that most of our previous definite information regarding the inhabitants of New Guinea applies only to a small portion of the north-west coast of that great island in the neighbourhood of Port Dorey, which is known to be peopled by several distinct varieties of mankind, of which one (with which, as occupying the coast, we are best acquainted) is designated the Papuan, or Papua, as generally understood by that appellation when used in its restricted signification. These Papuans, according to Dumont D'Urville,* compose the principal part of the population of Port Dorey, and, judging from his description, I have no hesitation in referring to them also the inhabitants of the Louisiade Archipelago and the South-East coast of New Guinea, and agree with Prichard (in opposition to the views of others) that they "constitute a genuine and peculiar tribe."**

(*Footnote. Voyage de l'Astrolabe tome 4 page 603.)

(**Footnote. Researches into the Physical History of Mankind volume 5 page 227.)

NATIVES OF NORTH-WEST COAST.

Another variety among the inhabitants of Port Dorey, spoken of by M. d'Urville as the Harfours, is supposed by him to include, along with another race of which little is known-named Arfaki-the indigenous inhabitants of the north-west part of New Guinea. The Harfours, Haraforas, or Alforas, for they have been thus variously named, have often been described as inhabiting the interior of many of the large islands of the Malayan Archipelago, but, as Prichard remarks, "nothing can be more puzzling than the contradictory accounts which are given of their physical characters and manners. The only point of agreement between different writers respecting them is the circumstance that all represent them as very low in civilisation and of fierce and sanguinary habits."* Their distinctness as a race has been denied with much apparent reason by Mr. Earl, and they are considered by Prichard to be merely various tribes of the Malayo-Polynesian race retaining their uncivilised and primitive state. Be this as it may, of these Harfours D'Urville states, that they reminded him of the ordinary type of the Australians, New Caledonians, and the black race of Oceania, from their sooty colour, coarse but not woolly hair, thick beards, and habit of scarifying the body. I mention these Harfours for the purpose of stating that no people answering to the description of them given above were seen by us in New Guinea or the Louisiade Archipelago.

(*Footnote. Ibid page 255.)

VARIETIES OF THE PAPUAN RACE AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION.

It appears to me that there are two distinct varieties of the Papuan race inhabiting the south-east portion of New Guinea. The first occupies the western shores of the Great Bight, and probably extends over the whole of the adjacent country, along the banks of Aird River, and the other great freshwater channels. Judging from the little that was seen of them during the voyage of the Fly, these people appear to agree with the Torres Strait Islanders-an offshoot, there is reason to believe, of the same stock-in being a dark and savage race, the males of which go entirely naked.

The second variety occupies the remainder of the south-east coast of New Guinea and the Louisiade Archipelago. Their characteristics have already been given in this work, as seen at intermediate points between Cape Possession and Coral Haven; they agree in being a lighter-coloured people than the preceding, and more advanced in civilisation: mop-headed, practising betel-chewing, and wearing the breech-cloth. Without entering into the question of their supposed origin, I may state that, in some of their physical, intellectual, and moral characters, and also partially in their language, they seem to me to show indications of a Malayo-Polynesian influence, probably acquired before their arrival in New Guinea, along the shores of which they seem to have extended, colonising the Louisiade during their progress, which at Cape Possession was finally arrested by their meeting with the other section of the race alluded to in the preceding paragraph.

It would be curious to see the effects produced at the point of junction of these two sections of the same race, probably somewhere between Aird River and Cape Possession. It is not unlikely that the Papuans of Redscar Bay and its vicinity derived the use of the bow and arrow from their neighbours to the westward-and that the kind of canoe in use in Torres Strait was an introduction from the eastward, is rendered probable-setting aside other considerations-by a circumstance suggested by the vocabularies, i.e. that the name for the most characteristic part of the canoe in question-the outrigger float-is essentially the same from the Louisiade to Cape York.*

(*Footnote. Louisiade: Sama. Darnley Island: Charima. Dufaure Island: Sarima. Prince of Wales Islands: Sarima. Redscar Bay: Darima. Cape York: Charima.)

I have alluded in a preceding part of this work (Volume 1) to the circumstance that the small vocabulary obtained at the Louisiade may, along with others, throw some light upon the question: whence has Australia been peopled?

ORIGIN OF THE AUSTRALIAN RACE.

It may safely be assumed that the aborigines of the whole of Australia (exclusive of Van Diemen's Land) have had one common origin; in physical character the natives of Cape York seem to me to differ in no material respect from those of New South Wales, South or Western Australia, or Port Essington,* and, I believe I am borne out by facts in stating that an examination of vocabularies and grammars (more or less complete) from widely remote localities, still further tends to prove the unity of the Australian tribes as a race.

(*Footnote. M. Hombron (attached to D'Urville's last expedition as surgeon and naturalist) considers-as the result of personal observation-that the aborigines of New South Wales exhibit certain points of physical difference from those of the North Coast of Australia, meaning, I suppose, by the latter, those natives seen by him at Raffles Bay and Port Essington. I may also mention that M. Hombron considers the Northern Australians to be a distinct subdivision of the Australian race, in which he also classes the inhabitants of the smaller islands of Torres Strait (as Warrior Island for instance) attributing the physical amelioration of the latter people to the fact of their possessing abundant means of subsistence afforded by the reefs among which they live, and the necessity of possessing well constructed canoes as their only means of procuring fish and dugong, stated by him to constitute the chief food of the Torres Strait islanders. Voyage au Pole Sud, etc. Zoologie tome 1 par M. Hombron pages 313, 314 et 317.)

The two places from one of which the Australian population may be supposed to have been more IMMEDIATELY derived, are Timor on the one hand and New Guinea on the other: in the former case the first settlers would probably have landed somewhere on the north-west coast, in the latter, at Cape York.

Mr. Eyre believes that there are "grounds sufficient to hazard the opinion that Australia was first peopled on its north-western coast, between the parallels of 12 and 16 degrees South latitude. From whence we might surmise that three grand divisions had branched off from the parent tribe, and that from the offsets of these the whole continent has been overspread."* Proceeding still further Mr. Eyre has very ingeniously attempted to explain the gradual peopling of Australia, and even indicate the probable routes taken by the first settlers during the long periods of years which must have elapsed before the whole continent was overrun by the tribes now collectively forming the Australian race. Dr. Prichard, when alluding to the probable mode of dispersion of the black tribes of the Indian Archipelago, conjectures that one of the branches during the migratory march probably passed from Java to Timor, and from thence to Australia.** Dr. Latham also inclines to the belief that Australia was peopled from Timor and not from New Guinea, judging, in the absence of positive proof, from the probability that "occupancy had begun in Australia before migration across Torres Strait had commenced in New Guinea," inferred "from the physical differences between the Australian and the Papuan, taken with the fact that it is scarcely likely that the Papuans of Torres Strait would have failed in extending themselves in Australia had that island been unoccupied." Timor also is much nearer than New Guinea to the REMOTE source-assumed to be the continent of Asia-whence the Australians have been derived.***

(*Footnote. Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia etc. by E.J. Eyre Volume 2 page 405.)

(**Footnote. Researches into the Physical History of Mankind Volume 5 page 214.)

(***Footnote. Natural History of the Varieties of Man by R.G. Latham, M.D. pages 257 and 253.)

The unity of the Australian race being admitted implies one common origin, and that such was not derived from New Guinea, can scarcely, I think, be doubted. Upon examining the neighbourhood of the point of contact between the New Guinea-men and the Australians, we find Cape York and the neighbouring shores of the mainland occupied by genuine and unmixed Australians, and the islands of Torres Strait with the adjacent coast of New Guinea by equally genuine Papuans; intermediate in position between the two races, and occupying the point of junction at the Prince of Wales Islands we find the Kowrarega tribe of blacks. At first I was inclined to regard the last more as degraded Papuans than as improved Australians: I am now, however, fully convinced that they afford an example of an Australian tribe so altered by contact with the Papuan tribes of the adjacent islands as at length to resemble the latter in most of their physical, intellectual and moral characteristics. Thus the Kowraregas have acquired from their island neighbours the art of cultivating the ground, and their superior dexterity in constructing and navigating large canoes, together with some customs-such as that of preserving the skulls of their enemies as trophies: while they retain the use of the spear and throwing-stick, practise certain mysterious ceremonies connected with the initiation of boys to the rights of manhood-supposed to be peculiar to the Australian race-and hold the females in the same low and degraded position which they occupy throughout Australia.

That the Kowraregas settled the Prince of Wales Islands either prior to or nearly simultaneously, with the spreading downwards from New Guinea of the Papuans of the islands, scarcely admits of absolute proof: but that the former have existed as a tribe for a long period of years is shown by the changes which I presume to have taken place in their language. While this last unquestionably belongs to the Australian class, as clearly indicated by Dr. Latham's analysis of the pronouns,* one of the characteristic parts of the language, and, therefore, least liable to change, yet the occurrence in the Kowrarega of a