NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 
733 
Ocean, and from which the black race spread into both Africa and the islands of 
the Pacific, is not satisfactory. For the deep-sea investigations of the Challenger have 
thrown great doubt upon the possibility of such an extensive continent ever having had 
any existence in recent geological times either in the Indian or Pacific Oceans. But 
from the superior civilisation and better physical development of the Polynesians there 
can be little doubt that they represent a later incursion into the Pacific than either the 
Melanesian or Australian races. 
“ It is interesting to observe that not only the Tasmanians and Australians, but the 
Bush race in South Africa, the Fuegians in the southern part of South America, and the 
Andamanese and other Negrito tribes in the islands to the south and east of the Asiatic 
continent, are distinguished by the small capacity of their crania, by their low 
intellectual development, and, as a rule, by their small stature and feeble physical 
configuration. It is not unlikely that these races may, in the early unwritten periods 
of human history, have had in their respective continental areas a much wider range of 
distribution than at present, and have been gradually pushed southwards into their 
present comparatively restricted regions by the advance from the northward of the races, 
more powerful in both intellectual and physical development, which are now to be seen 
in proximity with and around them.” 
