THE PAPUAN RACE. 



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The Papuan race may thus be traced with tolerable certainty, from 

 the Feejee Islands to the shores of New Guinea. The population 

 appears to be everywhere dense ; and to be divided as at the Feejee 

 Islands, into two classes that are politically independent, the fisher- 

 men or people of the coast, and the mountaineers. The practice of 

 cannibalism seems also coextensive with the race ; while the sur- 

 rounding islanders, though often in a less advanced state of society, 

 as generally hold it in horror. 



The Papuan race appears also to extend through a portion of the 

 East India islands ; but it probably does not occur to the west- 

 ward of Floris, or Ende. Dr. Dickenson " had seen some natives 

 of Floris, who came in a proa to Macassar ;" and he did not at first 

 recognise in Veindovi the least similitude ; but was less positive on 

 being informed that Veindovi's mode of wearing the hair erect, was 

 in part artificial. 



We read of a class of unmanageable " blacks, who have been some- 

 times taken with other slaves to the Philippines ;" and all the attend- 

 ant circumstances seem to indicate the Papuan race. 



Mr. Jenkins, of the English mission in the Tamul country, " was 

 once reading to some Hindoos, Dillon's account of the Feejee Islands; 

 when his auditors became greatly interested, perceiving that the same 

 description of people had been mentioned in their sacred books. 

 They were indeed spoken of in these books rather as a species of 

 demon, but they were clearly designated, and their geographical posi- 

 tion, 'far in the Southeast,' was likewise indicated." All which, 

 may be compared with the intercourse, known to have existed from 

 ancient times with the Molucca Islands. 



Notwithstanding the various remarkable coincidences in customs, 

 as the use of the neck-pillow, circumcision, similar modes of dressing 

 the hair, even to the staining of it of a flaxen hue, the Papuan race 

 does not appear to exist in Eastern Africa. At Zanzibar, I met with 

 two or three individuals of mixed race, who somewhat resembled 

 Feejeeans ; but the softness of the skin, at once marked the absence of 

 true affinity. 



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