Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10. 131 



there is also a certain amount of evidence from the 

 physical characters of the population themselves. It has 

 been raised as an objection by many people that if there 

 had been any considerable emigration of Polynesians into 

 America they would have left a much more definite trace 

 of their coming in the physical characters of the people 

 of America than is supposed the case. But this argument 

 does not necessarily carry very much weight, for the num- 

 ber of such Polynesians who reached America would 

 have been a mere drop in the ocean of the vast aboriginal 

 population of the Americas. Moreover, there is a certain 

 amount of evidence of the presence of people with Poly- 

 nesian traits in certain parts of the Pacific littoral. Von 

 Humboldt stated the people of Mexico and Peru had 

 much larger beards and moustaches than the rest of the 

 Indians. But there is a more striking instance in sub- 

 stantiation of the reality of this mixture of Pacific people 

 in America which raises the possibility that a certain 

 number of Melanesians, whose physical characters, being 

 more obtrusive by contrast than those of the Polynesians, 

 were more easily detected. In Allen's memoir (2, p. 47) 

 the following statements are found : — 



" Sir Arthur Helps tells us in his ' History of Spanish 

 Conquest in America' that the Spaniards, when they first 

 visited Darien under Vasco Nunez, found there a race of 

 black men, whom they (gratuitously as it seems to me) 

 supposed to be descended from a cargo of shipwrecked 

 negroes ; this race was living distinct from the other races 

 and at enmity with them," 

 and on page 48, 



" Perhaps other black tribes may be discovered upon 

 a more careful enquiry, and if the theory of Crawford be 

 accepted, which represents the inhabitants of Polynesia 

 in Antd-historic times as being a great semi-civilized 



