248 REPORT — 1861. 



people from any existing continent ; but, in making these remarks, I would 

 offer no encouragement to the belief that they originated in the locality to 

 ■which they are now limited. 



It has been said that " their language shows them to belong to the same 

 division with the Burmese of the opposite continent." But late vocabularies 

 oppose this view. The Burmese, moreover, show the average stature of 

 the southern Asiatic men ; and it would be as pure an assumption to affirm 

 that they had been derived from the Andamaners, as that these were degenerate 

 descendants of the Burmese. 



The few undersized, dark-skinned aborigines, as they are termed, of the 

 Great Nicobar, of the Philippines, of Java, Borneo, Sumatra, and Ceylon, are 

 driven furtliest into the interior by immigrants of other races, and are the 

 least likely to have emigrated or equipped vessels for the purpose of voyaging 

 to other lands. The average-sized Malay and Chinese, and the like later 

 colonists of the Indian Archipelago, are those that have the command of the 

 sea ; and the Andamaners are certainly not their descendants. 



Combined geological, geographical, and zoological researches have made 

 us cognizant of the fact of the formation and destruction of continental tracts 

 of land in the known course of the earth's period of existence. The Andaman 

 Islands, like the Nicobar, Java, Sumatra, and Ceylon, may have been parts 

 of some former tract of dry land, distinct from, and perhaps pre-existent to, 

 that neighbouring and more northern continent which has been the scene of 

 the elevation of the Himalayan range of mountains, in part — perhaps a great 

 part — within the tertiary period. This has been the opinion of geologists 

 for some time back, and is alluded to by Professor Ansted in his 'Ancient 

 World,' pp. 322, 324. The extensive collections and assiduous comparisons 

 of the animals of Ceylon by Sir J. Emerson Tennent have added valuable 

 evidence in favour of such opinion*. The Andamans are forty miles distant 

 from the nearest islands, the Cocos, on their north, and seventj'-two miles 

 distant from the Nicobar Islands on their south. There is a mountain 2400 

 feet in height called " Saddle Peek," probably volcanic, on the main island; 

 and there is a volcanic island in the. vicinity called " Barren Island,'' with an 

 active volcano. The whole of the shores of the Andamans are skirted by 

 continuous coral-reefs. It is plain that the Andamans are the active seat of 

 those causes that influence the change in the relations of land to sea. We 

 should doubtless err, therefore, in any speculation on the origin of their popu- 

 lation, if we were to assume that the Andaman Islands were such as they 

 now are when they received their first human inhabitants. 



The cardinal defect of speculators on the origin of the human species 

 seems to me to be the assumption that the present geographical condition of 

 the earth's surface preceded or coexisted with the origin of such species. 

 The monogenist, on that assumption, bent on tracing all human races ft-om 

 one source and one existent centre, exaggerates the application and value 

 of casual remarks to show, for example, that " the Australians are not 

 a pure race, but hybrids between true Negroes and a Malayan or yellow 

 race." (See Quatrefages' ' Unite de I'Espece Humaine,' 12mo, 1861, p. 173.) 

 And the poh'genist invokes a separate creation of each race for each existing 

 continent or island-home of such race. (Agassiz, in Nott and Gliddon's 

 'Types of Mankind.') 



"The Andamaners are perhaps the most primitive, or lowest in the scale of 

 civilization, of the human race. They have no tradition, and, as has been 

 before remarked, apparently no notion of their own origin. Finding in their 

 bows and arrows and their hand-nets implements that answer for acquiring 

 the principal articles of food which their locality yields, they have carried 



* Natural History of Ceylon, 8vo, 1861. 





