﻿J. T. Thomson. — The Whejice of the Maori. 27 



ArcMpelago is of very great antiquity. Amongst the foreign influences tha 

 can be traced, the first is African or Indo- African in character — that is, 

 embracing the Indian Archipelago, Australia, and Papuanesia. The 

 Melanesian languages are still probably Indo- African." 



For two, out of many glossarial resemblances given by the author, I 

 would refer the reader to Appendix I. as illlustrative of this part of the 

 subject. 



Of insular languages the author goes on to state that " they present 

 contrasts of harsh and soft phonologies such as those that are found in the 

 Continent of Asia and elsewhere, but their prevailing character is vocalic, 

 harmonic, and flowing. These phonologies have largely influenced the 

 languages of Melanesia and Micronesia, and they have degenerated in 

 Polynesia into extreme softness and weakness. In some respects Polynesia 

 has a closer resemblance to Malayan than to Eastern Indonesia. It is greatly 

 distinguished from the latter by its comparatively crude phonology, in its low 

 degree or absence of fluency and adhesiveness. It is nearer the Malay, while 

 it possesses many traits of the E. and N.E. Indonesian ideology, which is not 

 found in Malay, as well as some very striking ones that are peculiar to it." 



Mr. Hale has shown that the more eastern dialects of Polynesia have 

 been derived from the western, and have lost or changed some of the forms 

 of the latter. The Samoan group is considered by that authority as the first 

 location of the Polynesian race, from whence it spread south to New Zealand, 

 and east to Tahiti, Again, Logan states that the Australian languages, with 

 many characteristics in common with the insular, yet possess a primary form 

 radically distinct. They have also more modern connections, attributable to 

 the influence of the Indo-Polynesian and Papuanesian languages, exerted 

 chiefly on the East Coast. The eastern or Molluccan languages he affirms 

 to be, probably, the parents of all Polynesia. 



Of the Andaman language, which is of great interest, owing to its Negro 

 tribes having been so long preserved separate from surrounding continental 

 nations, Logan observes that it is purely Indonesian, and its words are 

 dissyllabic. At the dawn of our present ethnic light, vocalic languages 

 occupied the Malacca basin, and the fragments of a Negro population still 

 existing in the Andaman Islands and the Malay Peninsula speaking these 

 languages, attest to the fact that the spiral-haired Negro race were in 

 these regions j^rior to all others. The extensive enquiries of the above dis- 

 tinguished ethnographer have, therefore, led to the conclusion that a Negro 

 race once spread itself over Hindostan and India beyond the Ganges, and 

 whose languages even yet resist extinction by later intruding tribes. 



Crawfurd (whose purely speculative views I need not notice) has given a 

 laborious disquisition on the Malayan and Polynesian languages, from which I 



