PX DOI oy sO. 
LETTER IX. 
THE NATIVES OF THE NEW HEBRIDES—THEIR PERSONAL 
APPEARANCE—DIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE—-REMARKS AS TO 
THEIR PROBABLE ORIGIN. 
Aniwa, 
September, 1872. 
(Ie 
HAVE said little, as yet, about the inhabitants of the New 
Hebrides, my remarks hitherto having had reference mainly to 
the principal events which occurred during the voyages of the 
“Dayspring,” and the nature and scenery of the islands, ' 
Being now settled for the time on Aniwa, after having seen 
and compared the different islanders, I shall endeavour to give 
what information I have been able to gather concerning these 
natives, — information necessarily somewhat superficial in 
character, but still perhaps useful in showing the light in 
which these people appear to a casual visitor from the homes 
of civilization. 
The New Hebrideans are classified in two different ways. 
Along with the natives of New Guinea, and of those groups 
lying between New Guinea and the New Hebrides, they are 
termed Papuan negroes; while along with all the South Pacific 
islanders westward of Fiji (the New Zealanders excepted) they 
are termed Melanesians. The first is the ethnograrhic classi- 
fication ; the second is merely an arbitrary one, fixed in order 
