360 JOHN FRASER. 
presence of their Caucasian conquerors. To what extent these 
fair men may have incorporated themselves with the blacks, it is 
impossible to say, but their union would always tend towards the 
production of a brown type, an approach to the colour of the present 
Polynesians. 
If these ancestors of the Polynesians were there, as I imagine, 
in the early centuries of our era, I do not think it likely that they 
were so tall and robust a race as their descendants in Samoa and 
the other groups; for an easy life and abundance of food have 
surely added much to the bodily dimensions of the eastern islanders 
in the course of ages, just as any of our native Australian tribes 
that have in their territory abundance of game, or a lagoon well 
stored with fish, are found to have a better physique than their 
neighbours. 7 
But, be it remembered here that all I have now said about the 
location of these original Polynesians in the Sunda and Timor 
Islands and the Archipelago generally is mere speculation founded 
on linguistic evidence, for as yet I have no other evidence in sup- 
port of this theory except such facts and inferences as I have 
stated above. The physical and social aspects of the black and 
the brown races led Wallace, as we have seen, to form a similar 
opinion. | 
But it is certain that the most recent arrival in the Archipelago 
has been the Malays. And now I am on the firm ground of 
history ; for the Malays themselves acknowledge that they have 
been in possession there not more than five or six centuries. But 
very long before that Malay period, the waves of race movement, 
which Hindustan and Farther India and the adjoining regions 
have so often experienced, could not fail to affect the Archipelago; 
and so its fair-skinned population from necessity or choice began 
to move towards the east long before. It may be impossible now 
to determine the route by which the first of these moving parties — 
reached the more eastern isles ; but I think that few of them went 
through by Torres Straits; for that route was blocked by the 
savage and inhospitable Papuans of New Guinea and farther 
