Note (return) — LECTURE IX

In my last lecture I dealt with the islanders of Torres Straits, and shewed that these savages firmly believe in the existence of the human soul after death, and that if their beliefs and customs in this respect do not always amount to an actual worship of the departed, they contain at least the elements out of which such a worship might easily be developed. To-day we pass from the small islands of Torres Straits to the vast neighbouring island, almost continent, of New Guinea, the greater part of which is inhabited by a race related by physical type and language to the Torres Straits Islanders, and exhibiting approximately the same level of social and intellectual culture. New Guinea, roughly speaking, appears to be occupied by two different races, to which the names of Papuan and Melanesian are now given; and it is to the Papuan race, not to the Melanesian, that the Torres Straits Islanders are akin. The Papuans, a tall, dark-skinned, frizzly-haired race, inhabit apparently the greater part of New Guinea, including the whole of the western and central portions of the island. The Melanesians, a smaller, lighter-coloured, frizzly-haired race, inhabit the long eastern peninsula, including the southern coast from about Cape Possession eastward,310 and tribes speaking a Melanesian language are also settled about Finsch Harbour and Huon Gulf in German New Guinea.311 These Melanesians are most probably immigrants who have settled in New Guinea from the north and east, where the great chain of islands known as Melanesia stretches in an immense semicircle from New Ireland on the north to New Caledonia on the south-east. The natives of this chain of islands or series of archipelagoes are the true Melanesians; their kinsmen in New Guinea have undergone admixture with the Papuan aborigines, and accordingly should rather be called Papuo-Melanesians than Melanesians simply. Their country appears to be wholly comprised within the limits of British and German New Guinea; so far as I am aware, the vast area of Dutch New Guinea is inhabited solely by tribes of the Papuan race. In respect of material culture both races stand approximately on the same level: they live in settled villages, they practise agriculture, they engage in commerce, and they have a fairly developed barbaric art. Thus they have made some progress in the direction of civilisation; certainly they have far outstripped the wandering savages of Australia, who subsist entirely on the products of the chase and on the natural fruits of the earth.