XX NEW GUINEA AND ITS INHABITANTS 435 



the country was called New Guinea from the resemblance 

 of its inhabitants to the Negroes of Africa, removed from 

 them by nearly one-third the circumference of the globe. 

 The early writers, however, term the people Papuas or 

 Papuans, a Malay term given to them on account of their 

 woolly hair, so different from the perfectly straight hair of 

 almost all the other Eastern races. The Malay word 

 " papuwah " or " puwah-puwah," means frizzled like wool ; 

 and the Malays still call these people " orang papuwah " 

 — woolly-haired men, and the island itself, " tana papuwah " 

 — the land of the woolly-haired. 



It is a very remarkable fact that woolly-haired people 

 should be found in two such widely-separated areas, and 

 with very few exceptions, nowhere else in the world. In 

 Africa they occupy the larger portion of the continent, 

 extending over all the tropical and southern regions ; while 

 in the East they are found in a group of islands of which 

 New Guinea is the centre, extending westward as far as 

 Flores and eastward to the Fijis. There are also a few 

 outlying groups of woolly-haired people, which are of great 

 importance as indicating that this type once had a wider 

 extension than now. In the Pacific we have the now 

 extinct Tasmanians ; and far to the east, in the midst of 

 the brown Polynesians, we find the inhabitants of Penrhyn's 

 Island and Mangaia, in about 158^ west longitude, to be 

 of the Melanesian or dark race. In the Philippines there 

 is an aboriginal race of woolly-haired dwarfs — the Aetas 

 or Negritos ; and a similar descriptive term may be applied 

 to the Semangs of the Malay Peninsula, and to the natives 

 of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. These 

 various Eastern tribes differ among themselves quite as 

 much as do those of Africa. Both agree, however, in being 

 usually very dark-skinned, and examples may be found in 

 which Negroes and Papuans are in all respects very much 

 alike. But this is exceptional, and there is almost always 

 a characteristic difference which would cause most of the 

 Eastern Negroes to appear out of place on the continent 

 of Africa. The woolly hair, however, combined with the 

 dark skin and almost always with a dolichocephalic or long 

 skull, so markedly distinguishes all these people from the 



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