THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



coat of soft fur. The hair 

 of the head is long, usually 

 wavy or curly, either black 

 or very deep auburn. All 

 the men have beards, 

 whiskers, and moustaches. 

 "You naked cheeks!" is a 

 taunt they commonly apply 

 to beardless people. 



In height Australians 

 are not much inferior to 

 Europeans. They are mus- 

 cular, but with slender arms 

 and legs, owing to want of a 

 good and regular supply of 

 food. The head is generally 

 rather long and narrow, with 

 high cheek-bones. The lower 

 portion of the forehead pro- 

 jects strongly, producing the 

 overhanging eyebrows seen in 

 our illustrations; the upper 

 part recedes rapidly. The 

 lower jaw is decidedly promi- 

 nent, and this is regarded by 

 all anthropologists as a strong 

 characteristic of the lowest 

 human types, such as the 

 African dwarfs or the 

 Negritos of the Malay Penin- 

 sula. The mouth is large, 

 with thick lips. A conspicuous feature is the nose, which is so deeply depressed at the root 

 as to cause the eyes to appear to be drawn together; it is very broad at the nostrils. 



Stokes, who was very familiar with the country, says, " The Australians vary as curiously 

 as their soil." Others have expressed their astonishment at the peculiar differences between 

 the natives of various districts. Thus, Tasman, from whom Tasmania takes it name, in the 

 year 1686 found dark, woolly-haired people on the north-west coast. Cook, in 1770, saw on the 

 north-east coast some well-built men, with straight hair, of a chocolate-brown colour, whose noses 

 were not very flat, nor were their lips very thick. Among the Aborigines of the south-east 

 there were women as light as mulattoes. 



Earl has remarked that "a circle of 500 miles round Port Essington would enclose an 

 equal number of tribes, varying from deep black to the reddish yellow of the Polynesians." 

 Some are darker, some lighter; some are straight-haired like the Malays, others frizzly- 

 haired like Papuans. Even Wallace, however, admits that there are some signs of inter- 

 mixture in the north with Malays from the Malay Peninsula, and with Papuans from New 

 Guinea. But this has had little or no effect on the people. 



It has not yet been finally decided to what branch of the human family the Australians 

 belong that is a difficult problem; but they are clearly not Negroes, nor Mongols, nor 

 Papuans, nor Malays. Keaue and others consider them to be Caucasian like ourselves, and 

 identical with the Dravidians of India (see the Veddas in Chapter VIII.). Perhaps the reader 

 who studies our illustrations of these people may find that they remind him, in a general 

 way, of the lowest and coarsest types of humanity to be found in England at the present time. 



Photo by Kerry & Co.] 



A NATIVE OF PRINCE OF WALES ISLAND. 



[Sydney. 



