248 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



tached tribes, whose original affinity cannot now be traced, 

 have produced great differences of opinion among ethuol<>. 

 as regards their classification; the learned William von Hum- 

 boldt vainly claiming a unity of origin from the identity of the 

 dialects spoken by a great proportion of the Polynesians, whom 

 he and others regard as Malays. But, although we do not 

 mean to deny a pervading intermixture of Malay blood in the 

 composition of these tribes, still, as they vary, from absolutely 

 Oriental Negroes, to nations having most striking characl 

 tics of true Caucasians, the sole test of language, even if it were 

 beyond dispute, is scarcely of sufficient weight to determine the 

 whole question. It should be remembered that all the [Malay 

 dialects abound in Sanscrit words, which, be they borrowed 

 from the tongues of the present Indo-China, or from the Te- 

 linga of the peninsula, are still evidence of a prevailing Cauca- 

 sian admixture. Indo-China, the primaeval abode of the Malays, 

 bears Sanscrit names in every locality, whereas the Polyne- 

 sian languages are without these characteristics in the words 

 and grammatical structure. There are, moreover, monuments 

 of Man's presence in many islands, from the Ladrones, in the 

 Chinese seas, and Tinian, to Java, the Marquesas, Easter and 

 Pitcairn Islands, monuments, not the work of the present exist- 

 ing nations, but raised at so remote a period, that all memory 

 of the facts connected with them is departed even from myth- 

 ical tales ; yet they are constructed upon principles positively 

 akin to Caucasian reasoning and Caucasian skill. Tribes of 

 this type have left strong evidence of their ancient prevalence 

 in the present mop-headed Figees, the brown curly-haired 

 Marquesans, the dark-haired Hawaiians, and the variously 

 featured New Zealanders, in all of which, though the masses 

 of population indicate mixtures of lower origin, the chiefs point 

 to the true Caucasian descent, in their whole external con- 

 formation, and still more in the intellectual qualities they pos- 

 sess. It is from this high order of ancestors, it appears most 

 probable, that the pyramidal Morais, and other monumerts, 



