CONTINUED. 329 



live in separate communities, each governed by an inde- 

 pendent chief. Their dress resembles that of most savage 

 tribes, being simply a strip of cloth encircling the waist, 

 with one end brought down in front, passed between the 

 legs, and fastened behind. Their hair being crisp, wavy, 

 and growing in separate tufts, or bunches, in the same 

 manner as that of the Papuan or Pelagian negroes, would 

 seem to indicate that in Mindanao, as in Borneo, negro- 

 like races inhabit the interior. 1 do not think the people 

 I saw belonged to any of those savage tribes alluded to 

 by Prichard, " who are supposed to belong to the race 

 of Harafaras, and are said to have some analogy in 

 dialect and physiognomy with the Idaan or Dyaks of 

 Borneo." * 



Although it may have been satisfactorily proved by the 

 researches of Prichard and others, that the races of 

 Oceanica are distinct, and cannot be derived either from 

 the Peruvians on the eastern boundary, or from the 

 tribes of South Africa, which bound them on the west ; 

 yet it is curious to trace analogies between people appa- 

 rently so very distinct as the Malayo-Polynesians, and 

 the various tribes disseminated over the continents of the 

 two Americas. I never visited a horde of Dyaks without 

 involuntarily thinking of North American Indians, pro- 

 bably, from some similarity of feeling that exists between 

 them, as to the necessity of either scalping their enemies 

 or of chopping off their heads. In many points their 

 religious belief is also the same. " That enigmatical 

 subdivision of the natives into an almost countless mul- 



* Phys. Hist, of Mankind, vol. v. p. 59. 



