374 REMARKS AND OPINIONS. 



them all, and the same observation may be applied 

 to the vocabularies collected by Le Maire and 

 Schouten in New Guinea and the Isle de Moise. 



The languages in New Holland seem to differ 

 among themselves, and from the dialects of the 

 other race of men; the collections of words, which 

 we possess of them, are, however, not sufficient for 

 us to form an opinion. Sir Robert Brown assures 

 us, that the tribes with whom he had any inter- 

 course, could not count above four, and that five, 

 and many, were with them synonymous. 



We now come to the predominant race, of hand- 

 some physiognomy, long curly hair, and fair com- 

 plexion, though more or less tanned by the influ- 

 ence of the cUmate ; extending from Madagascar 

 in the west, to Easter Island in the east. 



We must acknowledge, with Marsden, the iden- 

 tity of the original stem to which all the dialects 

 belong, that are spoken by so many different tribes, 

 scattered over so immense a space. The coinci- 

 dence of the numerals in all the dialects from 

 Madagascar to Easter Island * proves, in strict- 

 ness, only a common communication, and not the 

 same descent. Numerals are easily taken from a 

 foreign language ; we find them the same in many 

 dialects of the Papuas, of which the affinity is 

 doubtful, and the inhabitants of the Marianes first 



* See Hervas Arithmet. d. nat., and the Table of Comparison 

 in Cook's third Voyage, Appendix, i. 



