1861] Papers relating to Aborigines of Andaman Islands. 265 
Since the arrival of these men at Moulmein, I have made an espe- 
cial study of them, and their reputed similarity to the true African 
Negro appears to have been greatly exaggerated. The forehead is 
well formed, and not retreating, neither are the lips coarse and pro- 
jecting, and the nostrils are by no means broad, the ear is small and 
well formed, the hair unlike the so-called woolly hair of a Negro 
and growing conspicuously in separate detached tufts. They have 
absolutely no trace of whiskers, beard, or mustache, and have been 
long enough in captivity for the growth of such, were it existent. 
The hair of the head also shews little disposition to elongate, it 
continues very short and crisped. The complexion is not a deep 
black, hut rather of a sooty hue, hands and feet small, the latter not 
exhibiting the projecting heel of the true Negro. 
The Andamanese appear to he one of many remnants, still extant, 
of a race, that was formerly , very extensively diffused over South 
Eastern Asia and its Archipelago, which, for the most part, has been 
extirpated by races more advanced towards civilization, being- now 
driven to remote islands, or mountain fastnesses, such as the Anda- 
mans, the interior of the great Nicobar (where they are reported to 
he constantly at warfare with the people of the coast), and within the 
present century for certain (vide Crawfurd), and probably even now, 
there are, or were, tribes of them in the mountains of the interior 
of the Malayan Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, and especially the 
Philippine Islands, where the island of Negros, derives this, its 
Spanish appellation, from its being inhabited by a blackish race, 
variously known as the Negrillo, Negrito, or true Papuan. The 
race has its head quarters in the great islands of Papua or New 
Guinea, where some tribes are found attaining to six feet in stature, 
whilst others are as diminutive as the Andamanese. 
Upon the island-continent of Australia, the true Papuan type 
has never been detected; but it formerly constituted the people 
of Tasmania, so numerous at the time of Captain Cook’s visit,' hut 
which race is there now all hut extinct, three or four individuals 
only surviving. The history of the capture of the last remnant of 
the race inhabiting Tasmania is well known, and their removal to 
an island in Bass’s Straits, where the Government provided them 
with blankets, and a certain amount of food ; but it is remarkable, 
that they died off fast, and chiefly from pulmonary consumption. 
