683 
ON THE JJSADING CHARACTERISTICS OF THE 
respectively the Malayan Peninsula or Sumatra and the Java 
Islands) he places a country far to the eastward of the Aurea Cher- 
sonesus, under the equinoctial line, which he states to be occupied 
by u iEthiopes Icthyophagi,” or “ Negro fish-eaters ; ” the first 
term being that employed by the Romans to distinguish the black and 
wooly-haired Africans from the Mauritani and other brown races 
of the coast j and the second, that usually applied to all nations 
who derived a portion of their subsistence from the sea.* The 
position of this country with regard to the Aurea Chersonesus 
agrees well with that of New Guinea, the great seat of the Papuan 
race. The existence of a negro people, at so remote a spot, which 
he must have learned from the information of Indian navigators, 
seems, indeed, to have led Ptolemy into the great error of his 
system, for believing that the country of the “ iEthiopes Icthyo- 
phagi” formed part of the continent of Asia, he has made that 
continent, in his general map of the world, come round by the 
south and join the African continent about Point Prassum, in 
latitude 15 q S. (the then southern known, limit of the east coast of 
Africa), thus making the Indian Ocean and the seas of the Eastern 
Archipelago, form one vast Inland Sea. 
The most striking peculiarity of the Oriental negroes consists in 
their frizzled or woolly hair. This, however, does not spread over 
the surface of the head as is usual with the negroes of western 
Africa, but grows in small tufts, the hairs which form each tuft 
keeping separate from the rest, and twisting round each other, until, 
if allowed to grow, they form a spiral ringlet. Many of the tribes, 
especially those who occupy the interior parts of islands whose 
coasts are occupied by more civilized races from whom cutting 
instruments can be obtained, keep the hair closely cropped. The 
tufts then assume the form of little knobs, about the size of a large 
pea, giving the head a very singular appearance, which has, not 
inaptly, been compared with that of an old worn-out shoe-brush. 
Others again, more especially the natives of the south coast of New 
Guinea, and the islands of Torres Strait, troubled with such an 
obstinate description of hair, yet admiring the ringlets as a head 
dress, cut them of and twist them into skull caps made of matting, 
thus forming very compact wigs. But it is among the natives of 
the north coast of New Guinea, and of some of the adjacent island, 
* The system of naming nations from the food which formed their chief 
means of support, seems to have been very prevalent among the ancients; 
witness “Hippophagi” the horse eating (Tartars,) “Lotophagi,” Lotus- 
eaters &c. This system, although not to be recommended at the present 
day, has proved highly useful, for these names are sometimes found to 
contain the only existing description of the habits of the people on whom 
they were conferred, as in the present instance. Dr Leichhardt in his 
late overland journey from Sydney to Port Essington, found some tribes 
of genuine Lotophagi on the lagoons of the table-land, as will come to be 
noticed below. 
