262 PRESENT STATE OF ETHNOLOGY 



regarding these Papuans of the northern coast of New Guinea, be- 

 cause our knowledge of them is still involved in much obscurity. We 

 see, meantime, that M. Kops considers them as belonging to a differ- 

 ent race from the Alfourous. Though no great ethnographic rigor 

 seems to have been employed in applying the names Papuans and 

 Alfors, or Alfourous, it would seem to be generally understood that 

 by the former are meant the indigenes of the coast, and by the latter 

 those of the interior and the mountains. The term Papou seems 

 derived from the Malay expression for crisped or woolly hair, (rambut 

 pua pua,) which has come to be applied to the inhabitants of the coast, 

 whose hair is of that description. The name of Alfourou comes from 

 the Portuguese word alforas, which properly signifies an enfranchised 

 slave. The Portuguese employed this term to designate the free 

 indigenes of the interior of the Moluccas, wishing thereby to dis- 

 tinguish them from the inhabitants of the cities. As applied at 

 present to the inhabitants of the coast and the interior, the two 

 denominations appear, as far as can be gathered, to pertain to two 

 distinct races. 



I ma}^ be permitted to cite here an important passage from Dr. 

 Prichard on the subject of the Alfourous of these countries. " What 

 can we make," he says, "of the Alforic race, which has been de- 

 scribed as a people apart, with a peculiar type and a peculiar form 

 of the skull ? It continues to be one of the most remarkable varieties 

 of the human race. We must join with it the mountaineers of Arak, 

 in New Guinea, seen and apparently well described by Lesson, as well 

 as the other indigenes of the great continent of Australia. ' ' 



In his instructive work before cited, Dr. Latham has admitted two 

 varieties under the head of the Papuan branch of the Kelonesian stock, 

 New Guinea. He publishes two remarkable profiles of their skulls, 

 taken from the "Voyage of the Uranie and Physicienne," one of 

 which has the traits of a dolichocephalic negro, while the other is 

 brachycephalic, like those of the brachycephalic Papuans cited above. 

 May not these figures pertain respectively, the former, or dolicho- 

 cephalic skull, to an Alfourou, and the latter, or brachycephalic one, 

 to a Papou? Yet the author attributes to the former frizzled hair 

 and to the latter straight. 



In relation to the place assignable to the brachycephalic Papous, 

 the main object of this section, I shall conclude by expressing the 

 opinion that it should be sought in the immediate neighborhood of 

 the brown Polynesians, of whom these Papuans are probably the stock 

 or the progeny, modified after some special manner by peculiar modes 

 of life, climate, &c. Mr. Earl rejects entirely the opinion that they 

 might be hybrids, and, as far as I can judge, with very sufficient 

 reasons.* 



°The celebrated academician of St. Petersburg, M. C. de Baer, has recently enriched 

 ethnological bibliography with two productions of great merit, entitled Crania selecta ex 

 thesauris anthropologicis Academics Imp. Petropolit. Pttrop., 1859, and Ueber Papuas und Alfu- 

 ren, ein commentar zu den beiden ersten Abschnilten der Abhandlung " Crania Selecta," &c. , 1859. 

 The learned author of these publications expresses very positive doubts as to the fact that 

 the skulls brought from Waigion by Guoy ani Gaimard really belonged to indigenous 

 Papuans. The skulls in question were taken from a tomb, and M. de Baer considers it 



