PRIMITIVE RACES 225 



The last letter I had was from Carl Lumholtz 

 from America on the eve of his departure to Borneo, 

 where he had gone with the intention of getting into 

 the far interior of the country to make a study of 

 that strange, elusive, shy forest people, the Punans. 

 When with them, he says, he will bear my question 

 in mind, and he only wishes he had had it in his 

 mind when with the cannibals of Queensland and 

 other primitive folk. 



My reason for going fully into this matter here is 

 the hope that the subject will be kept in mind by 

 others who may in the future have opportunities 

 of observing and interrogating primitive people on 

 the subject. 



Some of the most interesting of the primitive races 

 have quite vanished, and others are vanishing — the 

 Guanches, the remnant of the race that inhabited 

 the lost continent of Atlantis, and the Tasmanians, 

 and the Bushmen, perhaps the most interesting of 

 all savages. But happily some remain — a remnant 

 of the Bushmen, the Punans, the wild mysterious 

 Andamanese, the little-known tribes of the Amazonian 

 forest region, and, best of all, the pigmy races of 

 Africa. A study of these little people — a search 

 among the treasures concealed in the muniment 

 rooms of their forest hovels — would probably yield 

 a rich store of ancient documents relating to the 

 early history of mankind. 



I may mention in conclusion that the only scientific 

 explanation of the ease some persons find in sleeping 

 in a north-and-south position so far put forward is 



