NATURE 



J 93 



THE PEOPLING OF AUSTRALIA. 



Eaglehawk and Crow : a Study of the Australian 

 Aborigines^ including an Inquiry into their Origin 

 and a Survey of Australian Languages. By John 

 Mathew, M.A., B.D. Pp. xvi + 288. Five Plates and 

 a Linguistic Map. (London : David Nutt. Melbourne : 

 Melville, Mullen and Slade, 1899.) 



A GREAT deal has been written, and has yet to be 

 written, about the origin of the Australian natives. 

 Considering the immense area that they occupy, there is 

 a considerable amount of uniformity both from a physical 

 and a cultural point of view ; but it is now recognised 

 that this apparent uniformity does not necessarily imply 

 purity of origin ; indeed, a dual or multiple element in 

 the population may be said to be generally accepted. 



The latest investigator of this problem is the Rev. John 

 Mathew, who in his " Eaglehawk and Crow " has boldly 

 restated his previous solution that Australia was first 

 occupied by a branch of the Papuan family ; these first- 

 comers occupied all the continent, and having spread 

 across to the southern shores, they .crossed what is now 

 Bass Strait, and their migration terminated in Tasmania. 

 Then followed a hostile Dravidian invasion. Mr. 

 .Mathew thinks that this ingredient of the population 

 first touched on the north-east coast of Queensland, not 

 in one boat-load, but in an unintermittent stream for many 

 years, probably being forced southwards by the attacks 

 of a more powerful race. Finally, a Malay invasion came 

 later, and in a desultory way by detachments at irregular 

 intervals. 



The term Papuan is employed by Mr. Mathew as the 

 equivalent of Melanesian, and is meant to include the 

 Tasmanian Aborigines ; hence the Tasmanian Papuans 

 are invariably referred to in this volume as the substratum 

 for the present Australian race ; that in them there may 

 be a strain.of Negrito blood is not questioned, on the con- 

 trary, he inclines to that opinion. Dravidian is not to be 

 understood as indicating the direct descent of Australians 

 from Dravidians, but rather that one strong strain of 

 the Australian people is of common origin with the 

 Dravidians of India and their congeners. Malay refers 

 .generally to the people of that race to the north of 

 Australia without distinguishing nationality. It is evident 

 that Mr. Mathew uses these three race terms in a very 

 broad sense, and his view on the two first migrations do 

 not materially differ from those of Flower, Howitt and 

 other students. There is reason to believe, with De 

 (^)uatrefages and Hamy, Garson and Ling Roth, that the 

 Tasmanians are closely allied to the Negritos, and it may 

 be granted that this stock was formerly widely spread in 

 Australia. Keane in his recent work, " Man : Past and 

 Present," places the Australians, with the Tasmanians, 

 as one of his three divisions of the "Oceanic Negroes,"' 

 the "Negritoes'" and "Papuasians" (Papuans and 

 Melanesians) being the other two. He regards the 

 AustraUans as a highly specialised type of a single 

 ethnical division. 



The Melanesian stock is itself either complex, as several 

 NO. 1574, VOL. 61] 



anthropologists hold, or very variable, as Dr. A. B. 

 Meyer advocates. So far as British New Guinea is con- 

 cerned, there appears, speaking in general terms, to be 

 a western group, traces of which also occur in the south- 

 east, of a dark-skinned, frizzly-haired, usually dolicho- 

 cephalic people, whose language, as Mr. S. H. Ray has 

 pointed out, has a grammatical construction somewhat 

 analogous to that of the Australian languages. To the 

 south-east is a lighter-coloured people, more or less brachy- 

 cephalic, and with typically frizzly, but also with curly 

 and wavy hair, whose language is essentially similar to that 

 of the Melanesian Archipelago, and allied to Polynesian ; 

 indeed. Dr. Codrington regards the latter language as 

 degraded from the former. The ethnology of British New 

 Guinea is more complex than this brief statement implies ; 

 but these two main elements in the population must not 

 be overlooked. Unfortunately, Mr. Mathew states that 

 his term " Papuan is applied, not in its narrowest appli- 

 cation (dark New Guinean), but as the equivalent of 

 Melanesian" (p. 5), which, as we have just seen, he 

 leaves quite vague. Later on he tries to show that the 

 Victorian speech has more " Papuan " (or Tasmanian) 

 elements than the languages further north, and hence is 

 by inference more Melanesian than other .Australian 

 languages. The radical difference between Melanesian 

 and Australian grammar is not thought to be worthy of 

 even an attempted explanation. The languages of the 

 "dark New Guineans" (Kiwai, Bugilai, &c.), which are 

 expressly excluded from Mr. Mathew's " Papuans," have 

 some analogies in grammatical structure with those of 

 Australia. 



Mr. Mathew says a good deal about the colour of the 

 skin and character of the hair of the Australians, and 

 points out that numerous observers have recorded 

 considerable differences in these two features. Unfortu- 

 nately, these statements are general, and we have no 

 direct comparison with recognised standards, and all the 

 observers were by no means equally competent. _We must 

 assume that marked variations in colour do occur, and 

 that the hair may be variedly curly, but without cor- 

 roborative specimens we can scarcely admit that the 

 hair is sometimes straight or woolly. The evidence col- 

 lected by Mr. Mathew indicates that on the south-eastern 

 and western coasts the hair is more curly than towards 

 the interior. He speaks of "a decided Papuan fringe 

 . . . with a departure from it landwards and in the 

 north." 



We must now consider the Dravidian element in 

 Australia. The argument in favour of this view was first 

 stated by Huxley, and it has been generally adopted 

 (Huxley, it must be remembered, considered that the 

 Australians belonged entirely to that ethnic group). The 

 Sarasins in their elaborate monograph on the ethnology 

 of Ceylon admit that the Australians belong to a 

 " Primitive Dravidian " stem. Mr. Mathew makes the 

 following remarks with regard to this migration : 



"Coming as a later offshoot from the first home of 

 humanity, this invadmg band was of higher intelligence 

 and better equipped for conflict than the indigenes of 

 Australia. Physically, they were more lithe and wiry, 

 and of taller stature. They were lighter in colour, though 

 a dark race : less hirsute ; and the hair of their head was 

 perfectly straight " (p. 6). 



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