OF NORTHEASTERN BENGAL. 117 



given to this pro-Malay type of man, the probable ances- 

 tor of most it' not all, the nations of Asia, Europe, Africa 

 and Oceauica, and the derived races in the New World, 

 Color of skin and character of hair I regard as simply a 

 matter of climate, acting not during centuries, but many 

 thousands of years ; I believe that the first man had a dark 

 skin, and that crisped hair is an evidence of great antiquity 

 in a tropical heat, and not of a distinct origin. Why did 

 such an acute observer as Dr. Charles Pickering regard the 

 Japanese, the old Californians, the native's of Mexico and 

 the isthmus, and some of the American Indians (Cherokees 

 and Chippewas) as Malays? I have noticed the same in 

 Mexico (Acapulco, Manzanillo) and in Central America. 

 A consideration of these pro-Malay races, and of the 

 changes in the relations of land and water, which there are 

 good reasons for believing have occurred during this age of 

 man, would explain, or at least throw light upon, the early 

 migrations of man, and show how unsatisfactory are all 

 classifications of the human races which take into account 

 only those known to history; the border land between tra- 

 dition and history is well worth examination. Informing 

 an opinion on the aboriginal tribes of India, in the neigh- 

 borhood of one of the cradles of our species, we must go 

 back in time many thousand years before the Aryan occu- 

 pation, and before this branch, or Mongolian, or Malay, 

 existed as such; and I feel inclined to return to the old 

 idea that all the nations of men have originated from a very 

 few pairs, if not a single one. Whether created, or evolved 

 from an anthropoid ape, matters not for this hypothesis, 

 and both origins require a first appearance in a climate at 

 least sub-tropical, where clothing for protection would be 

 unnecessary — where food grew spontaneously — and where 

 caves, either natural or artificial could be found or made 

 in a soft and stratified, and not primary, geological for- 



