140 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



The " Kanakas," as the natives of New Caledonia and the 

 Loyalty group are wrongly 1 called by their present 

 Caledonians rulers, have been carefully studied by some French 

 anthropologists. Perhaps the best account of them 

 is that of M. Augustin Bernard 2 , based on the observations of 

 de Rochas, Bourgard, Vieillard, Bertillon, Meinicke, and Keane. 

 Apart from several sporadic Polynesian groups in the Loyalties 3 , 

 all are typical Melanesians, long-headed with very 

 characters broad face at least in the middle, narrow boat- 

 shaped skull (Ceph. Index yo) 4 , large, massive lower 

 jaw, often with two supplementary molars 5 , colour a dark chocolate, 

 often with a highly characteristic purple tinge ; but de Rochas' 

 statement that for a few days after birth infants are of a light 

 reddish yellow hue lacks confirmation ; hair less woolly but much 

 longer than .the Negro; beard also longish and frizzly, the pepper- 

 corn tufts with simulated bald spaces being an effect due to the 

 assiduous use of the comb' 3 ; very prominent superciliary arches 

 and thick eyebrows, whence their somewhat furtive look ; mean 



1 Kanaka is a Polynesian word meaning "man," and should therefore be 

 restricted to the brown Indonesian group, but it is indiscriminately applied by 

 French writers to all South Sea Islanders, whether black or brown. This 

 misuse of the term has found its way into some English books of travel even 

 in the corrupt French form "canaque. " 



- DArchipel de la Nouvelle Caledonie, Paris, 1*95. 



>J Lifu, Mare, Uvea, and Isle of Pines. These Polynesians appear to have 

 all come originally from Tonga, first to Uvea Island (Wallis), and thence in 

 the 1 8th century to Uvea in the Loyalties, cradle of all the New Caledonian 

 Polynesian settlements. 



4 This low index is characteristic of most Papuasians, and reaches the 

 extreme of dolichocephaly in the extinct Kai-Colos of Fiji (65), and amongst 

 some coast Papuans of New Guinea measured by Miklukho-Maclay. But this 

 observer found the character so variable in New Guinea that he was unable to 

 use it as a racial test. In the New Hebrides, Louisiades, and Bismarck group 

 also he found many of the natives to be round-headed, with indices as high as 

 80 and 85 ; and even in the Solomon Islands Dr Guppy records cephalic 

 indices ranging from 73 to 82 with a mean of 81 in Treasury Island (Nature, 

 April 26, 1883). Thus this feature is no more constant amongst the Oceanic 

 than it is amongst the African Negroes. (See also M. Maclay's paper in Proc. 

 Linn. Soc. New South Wales, 1882, p. 171 sq.) 



3 Eth. p. 184. 



(i Eth. pp. 170, 425. 



