Note 14 — PART I

Exposed to all inclemencies of the weather, and with an unwholesome and precarious diet, they perhaps rarely attain more than forty years of age. Their numbers are supposed rather to diminish than increase; and in a few years this race of men, with their language, will probably be extinct. It is indeed a curious subject of enquiry, whether the language of those of the eastern islands has any, and what resemblance to those of Africa, or the southern parts of New Holland and Van Dieman’s Land?14