1839.] POPULATION. 163 



already many native missionaries, and a degree of comfort 

 and prosperity is witnessed among the people, which com- 

 pares favorably with the loathsome wretchedness exhibited 

 further to the east. 



In regard to the physical character of the inhabitants, there 

 is a wide field for speculation. The distinctive features of 

 the Malay and the aboriginal American, are presented in a 

 blended form, and now and then some peculiar characteristic 

 of the Papuan negro is observed, which threatens to overturn 

 all the carefully-constructed theories of the ethnologist. It 

 is by no means improbable that these islands were originally 

 peopled by American aborigines and Asiatics, or by the de- 

 scendants of those races found intermingled on the other 

 islands of the Pacific ; and, perhaps, some of the Papuan 

 stock inhabiting the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, New 

 Britain, New Hebrides, etc., may have found their way 

 hither. Trees of American and Asiatic growth, have been 

 often carried to this part of the ocean, by the winds and cur- 

 rents ; and Indians in their canoes, and Japanese in their 

 junks, who had strayed too far out to sea, have been picked 

 up by European and American vessels, in the middle of the 

 Pacific. Junks, boats, or canoes, might easily pass in the 

 variable winds, without the tropics, from the Asiatic coast 

 and the neighboring islands, till meeting with the trades, 

 they would naturally be driven towards the Sandwich or the 

 Society islands ; and they might also be blown in that direc- 

 tion, by strong westerly winds prevailing for a long time.* 



The dress of the females usually consists of a dirty piece 

 of tapa, swathed about the form like a petticoat ; but among 



* Lyell well remarks in his Principles of Geology, (vol. ii. p. 121,) that if the 

 whole of mankind with the exception of a single family occupying either of the 

 two great continents, or Australia, or even one of the coral islets of the Pacific, 

 were cut off, " we should expect their descendants though they should never 

 become more enlightened than the South Sea Islanders or Esquimaux, to spread, 

 in the course of ages, over the whole earth, diffused partly by the tendency of 

 population to increase beyond the means of subsistence in a limited district, 

 and partly by the accidental drilling of canoes by tides and currents to distant 

 shores." 



