200 



NATURAL HISTORY OF 



ever, is this branch of the Negro stock equal in stature 

 and vigour to the African. Sometimes varying to yel- 

 lowish-brown, it is in colour sooty black ; in stature 

 often so diminutive, that the small heads they have 

 appear large, the more in disproportion, because the 

 extremities are feeble and slender. Such at least is the 

 case with many of the tribes still possessed of retreats 

 in the Malay Archipelago and Peninsula ; but this form 

 of the woolly haired stock, unlike the African, dimi- 

 nishes rapidly before the encroachments of Malays, 

 Arabs, and Europeans. Many of them prefer death to 

 slavery ; others vegetate in that condition, their mar- 

 riages not producing more than one or two children ; 

 and some, becoming Mahometans, form mixed popula- 

 tions, where Horafoura and Malay, Hindoo and Arab, 

 Chinese and European, have been promiscuously mixed, 

 and their characteristics obliterated. In this way 

 Western Asiatic nations, with more undulating or lank 

 hair, were likewise formed, by intermixture with the 

 low fronted Dombuks, Nimreks, and Kakasiah, or black 

 brothers. They may have influenced even the black 

 Kalmuks, the Colchians of Herodotus, and the black 

 Bedoueens. 



From the geographical position of the purest Papua 

 Negroes, it is evident, they have been the first race 

 expelled the coasts and plains, since they are insu- 

 lated in the mountains, or driven to the unhealthy 

 equatorial points, where other tribes cannot multiply. 

 Hence, they are the oldest primaeval race, even if it 

 should be denied, that they are a population of anterior 



