350 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Arabs and Malays and natives from Allor, Savu, Roti, and Flores ; 

 besides a crowd in whose veins the degree of commingledness of blood 

 of all these races would defy the acutest computation." * The Timor- 

 ese themselves represent the Malay, the Papuan, and the Polynesian 

 races. But they also offer exceptions which can not fail to strike the 

 beholder with wonder. For instance, the same author writes : " While 

 in the act of turning from watching this human hunt to continue my 

 journey, my eye lighted on an object that riveted my interest more 

 than all else among those savage marketers — a red-haired youth, first 

 one, then a few others, some with straight, some with curly hair, with 

 red eyelashes, blue eyes, and the hair over their body also reddish. 

 I found, on inquiry, that a little colony of them, well known for their 

 peculiar color of hair and eyes, lived at Aituha, at no great distance 

 off. Though they lived in a colony together, they were not shunned 

 by their neighbors, who even intermarried with them. The offspring 

 of these unions took sometimes after the one, sometimes after the 

 other parent. In looking eagerly at their faces, I saw more than their 

 features only ; their presence there was an excerpt out of a long his- 

 tory. In imagination I saw past them down the dim avenues of Time 

 — a far, far cry — to their early progenitors, and pictured their weary 

 retreat, full of strange and romantic vicissitudes from a more northern 

 clime, till forced off the mainland by superior might into exile in this 

 remote isle, where, as a surviving remnant amid its central heights, 

 they are living united, but not incorporated with the surrounding race 

 whose pedigree has no link in common with their own." f 



Space will not permit me to more than allude to the race-mixtures 

 of Hindostan and its border-lands, of the Afghan frontier uplands, 

 where Mongoloid and Caucasian still contend for the mastery,^ of the 

 important region once swayed by the scepter of Darius, of the lands 

 of the Sultan, of the many-tongued realm of the Czar, and the long, 

 deep range of Arab conquest in Africa. 



Of what blood-fusion did for that part of the world, the broad seat 

 of successive empires in the distant past, I have already briefly spoken. 

 And the transformation is still going on. The sons of Joktan and 

 Ishmael, with the Koran in their hands, have been trying for ages to 

 convert the dark tribes of Africa to the creed of the Moslem, and, in 

 preaching their gospel, they have not disdained to share their ancient 

 lineage with their dusky disciples. Arabic scholars have, by the cruel 

 fortunes of the slave-hunt, found themselves enthralled to Brazilian 



* "A Naturalist's Wanderings," etc., p. 418. \ Ibid., pp. 464, 465. 



% Mr. A. II. Keane (" Nature," January 8, 1885) divides the North-Afghan tribes into 

 Caucnsic and Mongolic; and, again, the former into Galchas and Iranians, and the latter 

 into Mongols and Tartars. The Galchas are subdivided into Siah-Posh, Badakshi, Wakhi, 

 and Bhugnaris ; the Iranians into Kohistani, Firuz-Khoi, Jcmshidi, Tajiks, and Afghans. 

 The Mongols arc composed of Ilazarahs and Airnaks, and the Tartars of Salor-Turkomans 

 and Kataghani Uzbecks. The Caucasians number something over a million, and the Mon- 

 gols over a million and a quarter. 



