322 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



such as Jemmy, and how much I miss his pretty little ways as I 

 sit in the "Monkey-room" writing this memoir of my little pet. — 

 Land and Water. 



01^ THE MIGRATIONS OF RACES * 



By FKIEDKICH MtLLEE. 



IN endeavoring to subject this question to a brief examination, it 

 must be previously understood that we only refer to those migra- 

 tions which explain the distribution of existing and contemporaneous 

 races and peoples, and such as can be deduced with some certainty 

 from acknowledged facts. Neither will we consider migrations of in- 

 dividual races from some hyjaothetical ethnic center, nor those which 

 many tribes have made that at present no longer exist. Except the 

 aborigines of Australia, every people has undertaken migrations of 

 greater or less extent, and many weighty reasons can be given to 

 explain why the Australian has not ventured outside of his primi- 

 tive abode. In the first place, from the very character of his coun- 

 try, through the absence of those animals and plants which contrib- 

 ute to enjoyment and prosperity, he had not raised himself to a 

 knowledge of the pleasures of living incident to an advancing culture ; 

 and, in the second place, the country was itself large enough to contain 

 the limited number of inhabitants, and to satisfy their simple wants. 

 Whether the immediate neighbors of the Australian — the Papuans — 

 have ever undertaken migrations is questionable ; on account of the 

 circumstance that they universally inhabit islands, and their dwellings 

 built along the coasts resemble the pile-villages discovered in central 

 Europe, it is easier to say they did migrate than to deny it. Yet the 

 whole question is most intimately united to another, viz.. Shall we 

 consider that the ancient continent, of which the islands of the Indian 

 Archipelago are fragments, was already peopled before its submer- 

 gence, or were these separate islands successively occupied by expan- 

 sion from some center ? 



None of the known races has undertaken so extended a migration 

 as the Malayan. The distribution of this race from Madagascar in the 

 west to Easter Island in the east, and from the Sandwich Islands in the 

 north to New Zealand in the south, illustrates this. Notwithstanding 

 its extent, this dispersion is traced from an ascertained point to the 

 several islands as the traditions of each and the related character of 

 the idioms of the individual branches unanswerably demonstrate. 



Africa shelters at present five races distinct from one another, viz., 

 the Hottentot in the extreme south and southwest, the Caffre, spread 

 northward from the Hottentot, as far as and beyond the equator^ 

 * Translated from the " Allgemeine Ethnographie," by L. P. Gratacap. 



