Note 14 — PART II

The negro of the east appears to have amalgamated with some other family. On the south coasts of Australasia, they resemble in many points the people just described. This continues to be the case as far as Cape Capricorn. To the northward of this, as far as Murray’s Islands in Torres Straits, they are a stout, tall, athletic race of men,15 and as hairy on the face and body as Europeans, with long hair, and without the negro cast of countenance. This race may be traced by intervals to Ternate, Gilolo, &c., where they are called Harraforas;16 but none are found in the Phillippines (unless the Ylocos have some relationship to them). Is not the native of New Ireland and Queen Charlotte’s Islands too of this race?17 The difference between them is most striking. The one are dwarfish negroes, the others almost black Europeans. Both are essentially different from the Malay family, and not only so, but from each other (the native of Amboyna, I think, forms the link between them) and this difference is apparently anatomical, in the shape of the skull, facial angles, &c.

We are as yet in the infancy of our knowledge of the origin of these various families of the human race: like that of languages, it will in all probability remain one more of conjecture than of fact; but it is still a subject of deep interest. I have heard from respectable authority, that the language of Cagayan, the most northern province but one of the island of Luzon, the men of which are tail, stout, olive-coloured, almost beardless, and proverbial for their mildness, peaceable behaviour, and fidelity, so much resembles that of the Sandwich islanders, that some of these at Manila found no difficulty in making the Cagayan servants understand them! The province of Ylocos is the next to this to the north, and forms the north coast of the island. The Ylocos are black, short-bearded men, and noted for their insubordination and dissipated character. ↑