March 22, 1858.] RECENT AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATIONS. 
185 
until we come to tlie Feejee Islands in the South Seas, and then they cease. 
From the Feejee Islands to the coast of America not a negro to he seen. They 
are found in the island of New Caledonia, which has lately been taken pos- 
session of by the French. The New Hebrides and New Ireland are peopled 
by them ; they are generally robust people, totally unlike the people of the 
Malay peninsula, the Andaman Islands, and the Philippines. Just one word 
for a name which has been frequently used by European travellers and referred 
to by Mr. Yeats. A1 fores is not the name of a people at all : it is only the 
corruption of a Portuguese word meaning “ outside people.” It has nothing 
to do with any particular race of men. We constantly hear of the Alfores ; 
it is equivalent to what the Spaniards call the Indios bravos — that is, the 
untamed, uncivilized Indians. With respect to the Negro languages, I dare 
say there are about 50, different ones. I have myself examined at least a 
dozen specimens, and no two of them agree. The only agreement among 
them is that they frequently borrow words from the Malay language. 
Mr. Yeats, f.r.g.s. — With regard to the last remark, I would venture to 
say that there are two names given to these same mountaineers : Alfores is the 
common generic term, but the word Marassi is also applied to them Through- 
out this paper of Dr. Muller one thing has struck me : his statement is 
singularly clear, and, where argument is resorted to, it is peculiarly conclusive. 
He has decidedly stated that there are two distinct races, the mountaineers 
and the people on the coast. While the people on the coast wander about, a 
nomadic race, the mountaineers are a settled, energetic, hardy set of men, as 
we should expect them to be. I have lived in Holland between three and four 
years, long enough to become naturalised, and I have also lived between three 
and four years in the mountains at the base of the higher Alps. I know well 
the distinction between mountaineer and lowlander, and the contrasting 
qualities of the two races are so clearly brought out in this work of Muller, 
that 1 have no doubt in my own mind that there are two distinct races, and 
that the mountaineers will in the end prove the conquering race. 
The second Paper read was — 
2. Latest Communications on Australian Exploration. By Captain A. H. 
Freeling, r.e., Surveyor-General, Mr. Stephen Hack, and others. 
Communicated by the Right Hon. Henry Labouchere, Colonial Office. 
The communications that have lately been received by the Society 
relative to South Australia refer to two adjacent regions, the one 
within the bend of Lake Torrens, and the other lying immediately 
to the westward of it. As regards the first of these, the results of 
Eyre’s expedition and that of Frome were such as to hold out little 
or no hope that these regions would ever become available to 
settlers, yet small watering places have gradually been discovered and 
cattle stations pushed onward, until in 1856 they had extended up to 
Mount Serle, and even a short way beyond it, although all knowledge 
of the country ended at the Mount Hopeless of Mr. Eyre. In 
August of that year, 1856, a geological expedition was organised, 
under the joint leadership of Mr. Herschel Babbage and Mr. Bonner, 
