CHAPTER XXI 



AFFINITIES AND ORIGIN OF THE AUSTRALIAN AND 

 POLYNESIAN RACES ^ 



The aborigines of Australia differ remarkably from those 

 of all the surrounding countries, while they agree so closely 

 among themselves in every part of the continent that 

 they evidently form a single race. To summarize their 

 main characteristics, they may be described as men of 

 medium stature, muscular, but with slender arms and 

 legs, rather large heads, with broad foreheads and over- 

 hanging brows, the nose thick and very broad at the 

 nostrils, as in most of the lower races, the mouth large and 

 lips thick, but less so than in many negro tribes. In 

 colour they are a deep copper or chocolate, never sooty 

 black as in the negro ; the hair is long, glossy black or 

 very deep auburn, usually wavy or curled, and very abun- 

 dant, and the face is adorned with a luxuriant growth of 

 moustache, beard, and whiskers, usually with an auburn 

 tinge. These characters in their combination give the 

 face, as a whole, a familiar appearance, resembling that of 

 the coarser and more sensual type of Western Europeans, 

 while they are thereby totally removed from any of the 

 beardless Malayan and Polynesian tribes, or the woolly or 

 frizzly-haired Papuans. (The reproduction of the photographs 

 of the man from North Australia, and the woman from 



^ The first portion of this article (to p. 473) forms the concluding sec- 

 tion of my chapter on " The Aborigines of Australia " in Austrcdasia, 

 vol. i., and is reprinted here by the kind permission of Mr. Edward 

 Stanford. 



