ANCIENT SCRIPT IN AUSTRALIA. 259 
through the great cyclones that are prevalent in those vast 
oceans. 
But now the question arises whether these Australian blacks 
could have been descended from the Japanese, they being so 
unlike them in their personal appearance. The Japanese have 
oval faces, with rounded foreheads, and their eyes are slightly 
oblique, whereas this figure in the paper of an Australian repre- 
sents him with a broad face and a forehead by no means promi- 
nent, and eyes perfectly straight. He has a face, I should say 
from my little observation, intermediate between that of an 
European and a negro. His lower jaw, however, does not seem to 
protrude much like that of a negro; but his nose is very broad, 
like that of the usual negro type. On the other hand his hair and 
beard are long and copious, both of which features are unlike 
those of the Japanese. But we know that in Japan there is a 
race of people, called Inas, who are noted for their abundance of 
hair, and the Japanese records tell us that they had many en- 
counters in early days with ‘“‘hairy barbarians.” Those people 
now inhabit the north of Japan; but it is very likely that they 
were driven out from a wider extent of territory anciently. 
It is thought by some that the Japanese early races come from 
Siberia, as they bear so striking a resemblance to the Eskimo of 
America and Asia, and that they overcame the Ainos in the North, 
and the Malays in the South; leaving the more inclement regions 
finally to the subject Ainos. Be that as it may, the natives of 
Australia might possibly have descended from the Ainos; 
and as the Ainos, so far as I am aware, had no written language, 
they would, on landing in Australia Gf they knew the Japanese 
writing) naturally make a record therein. But while that is 
possible, there is this against it—that Professor Haddon, who is a 
very great investigator into the appearances, manners, customs, 
traditions, and language of the natives in and around New Guinea 
and Borneo, recently spending a day or two with the Yanaikanna 
Tribe near Cape York in the far North of Australia, when 
returning from New Guinea, as I heard him tell at Dover the year 
before last,* and he found that while of Australian build and 
aspect, they had customs very similar to those of the Papuans, 
* Brit. Assoc. Report, 1899, p. 585. 
