8 COMPENDIUM OF GEOGEAPHY AND TRAVEL 



5. Races of Mankind. 



In the variety of human races it exhibits, and the 

 interesting problems which these present to the anthro- 

 pologist, the Eastern Archipelago is hardly surpassed by 

 the great continental divisions of the globe. Concerning 

 the number of distinct races found within its boundaries 

 there are still discrepancies of opinion. For the sake of 

 convenience they may be divided into the two groups of 

 brown and dark, the former including the true Malays, 

 the Indonesians or Pre-Malays, and the allied race of 

 Eastern Polynesians, and the latter the Papuans, the 

 Australians, and the ISTegritos. 



The true Malays (see frontispiece), and the Indo- 

 nesians who were the earlier settlers of these lands, 

 inhabit all the western part of the Malay Archipelago 

 from Sumatra to the Moluccas. To the eastward of the 

 latter group are the Papuans, whose headquarters are New 

 Guinea, but who range to Timor and Flores on the south- 

 west, and to the Fiji Islands on the east (see illustrations 

 pp. 399, 420). The Australians form a race admitted by 

 most authorities to be distinct. The islands of Eastern 

 Polynesia are for the most part inhabited by a brown people, 

 who have been usually classed with the Malays on account 

 of some similarity of language and colour, and erroneously 

 termed Malayo-Polynesians. They present, however, so 

 many and important differences, both physical and 

 mental, from the true Malays, that the best authorities 

 are agreed in considering them to be altogether distinct. 

 Finally, we have the dark, dwarf, curly-haired Negritos, 

 confined, so far as is known, to the four or five largest 

 islands of the Philippines,^ and probably allied to the 



1 The Karons of N. W. New Guinea are also considered hj some \vriters 

 to be of Negrito stock. 



