44 Transactions . — Miscellaneo us . 



recognisable — a dark-skinned negroid people and a light- 

 complexioned people of the Malay type. Although these in- 

 gredients when Europeans came upon the scenes were more 

 or less intermingled on the iVustralian Continent and in Tas- 

 mania, the negroid race was practically pure. In eastern 

 Polynesia and New Zealand the light-complexioned inhabi- 

 tants showed little of the negroid admixture, but in the re- 

 maining portion of the region, New Guinea, Melaiiesia, and 

 Micronesia, the intermingling had produced an endless variety 

 of colours and a babel of tongues. 



Of the two races, the darker was undoubtedly the abori- 

 ginal, for, had New Guinea and the adjacent islands been 

 peopled by the light-complexioned and more civilized people 

 previous to the incoming of the dark-skinned inhabitants, it 

 would have been impossible for them to effect the settle- 

 ment. Though the people of eastern Polynesia were far in 

 advance of the Australian natives, compared with any of 

 the civilized nations bordering on the Pacific region at the 

 commencement of the sixteenth century they were in a very 

 backward state. Like their ruder neighbours, they were igno- 

 rant of the use of metals and of the potter's art, even in the 

 simplest form ; though they habitually clothed and subsisted 

 by agriculture, their clothing materials and husbandry were 

 of the most primitive types. In one important set of arts 

 they excelled — as seamen and navigators they surpassed all 

 other people of whom we have any information, excepting 

 modern Europeans and those who ever acquired the know- 

 ledge. Were these light-complexioned people the architects 

 of the ancient monuments, or was there yet another race in 

 the Pacific region ? 



The distribution of the mysterious structures coincides 

 exactly with the distribution of the most civilized section of 

 the present population. In Micronesia, where both the dark- 

 and light-complexioned people were represented, the darker 

 people, holding an inferior position, cultivated the soil ; the 

 others, who were strictly prohibited from intermarrying with 

 them, followed the sea — were the boatbuilders and fishermen. 



The nearest counterparts of the Polynesian structures 

 were discovered in Mexico and Peru, or in the portion of 

 the world that represented the Age of Bronze. Turning to 

 southern Asia, the most ancient home of civilization, it is 

 only amongst the remains of the very remote past we find 

 anything akin to these New- World and Polynesian monu- 

 ments. 



The ruined tombs and temples of Java, constructed during 

 the first centuries of the Christian era, show how far architec- 

 ture had advanced in the Asiatic islands in that remote period. 

 The following description of the great temple of Boroboro, in 



