THE MAORUS PLACE IN HISTORY, par 
habited, or only tenanted by people little better than savages 
owing tc the failure of external aid. 
Near Mizdah, in Northern Africa, a few wandering Bedouins 
now eke out a miserable existence, though costly tombs and 
other remains prove that the country had a wealthy and 
luxurious population during the period of Roman supremacy. 
What the land lacked the great civilizing nation supplied, 
A similar fate is in store for Northern Chili when the nitre 
deposits are exhausted. 
Cut off from the rest of the world, it was impossible for 
the inhabitants of Eastern Polynesia to maintain a civiliza- 
tion much higher than Europeans found amongst them. 
Taking everything into consideration, it seems by far more 
probable that the modern Polynesians are the direct descend- 
ants of the people by whom the mysterious monuments were 
constructed than that another people once occupied the 
widely scattered islands of the great sea. 
Borneo, Madagascar, and South Africa furnish examples of 
people capable of extracting iron from the ore and workin 
it into well finished weapons and implements, but who other- 
wise were no higher in the scale of civilization than the 
natives of Kastern Polynesia in the sixteenth century. We 
can thus perceive that in many parts of the world a know- 
ledge of metal-working preceded much simpler arts. 
In seeking the birth-place of metallurgy, we may at once 
discard Central and Northern Asia, Europe, and Africa, for 
even if we had not the evidence of the early Egyptian 
monuments, we can at once see that the lower Nile valley 
was not a place wherein metals might have been first dis- 
covered and brought into use. 
As the swamps of Mesopotamia, where Chaldean civilization 
commenced its existence, contained no metals, there remains 
only South-Eastern Asia and the adjacent archipelago, 
wherein the “ Age of Metals” may have commenced. Here 
were all the conditions favourable to a discovery—an abun- 
dance of the metals that came first into use, and a large 
population since a very remote period. 
Tin and copper ornaments being still worn by the Dyaks 
of Borneo, it is at least probable that the ingredients 
employed in the manufacture of bronze were made use of in 
the region prior to the discovery of the compound. The 
invention of bronze, and its application in the manufacture of 
Weapons and mechanical implements, must have given an 
impetus to civilization analogous to the impetus given by the 
