GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 251 



Feejee Islands, where it is more or less mingled 

 with the Polynesian race, and where the language 

 appears to be of Polynesian origin. It is probable 

 that from New Caledonia proceeded the colony, or 

 whatever it was, that reached Tasmania, and there 

 mingled with the Australian race. To the westward 

 of New Guinea scattered tribes, apparently of Pa- 

 puan race, are said to occur in the interior of many 

 islands as far west as that called Ende, Flores or 

 Mangeray, and as far north as the Philippine 

 Islands. It has even been said that the Andaman 

 Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are inhabited by a 

 people much resembling the Papuans, and I have 

 been struck with the similarity of many of their 

 customs to those which are said to characterize some 

 of the wild hill tribes in the centre of India. I be- 

 lieve, however, that many of the stories of tribes of 



that race in navigation, the inference that they have travelled 

 from the west into the Pacific Ocean, and extended their migra- 

 tion only so far as the monsoon allowed them. He believes also, 

 from some similarity in the customs of the aboriginal Americans 

 and the Polynesians, and the analogy in structure between the 

 double American balsas and the double canoes of Polynesia, that 

 the latter race have come from America, and that their extension 

 to the eastward was checked by finding the Papuan islands 

 already in possession of a numerous, hostile, and ferocious race. 

 Whatever may have been the origin of the Polynesians, it is cer- 

 tainly most probable that their reason for going round these 

 Papuan islands (whether from the east or west), and not taking 

 possession of them, was the fact of their being previously in- 

 habited by the Papuans. 



