9 
LANGUAGES AND RACES. 1&5 
The inhabitants of the Caroline, the Marianne or Ladrone, and 
Pelew Islands, probably constitute a third subdivision of the brown- 
eomplexioned and lank-haired people. The average height of five 
individuals, as taken by Freycinet* and his companions, was 5 feet 
7 inches English. This would make them much taller than the Ma¬ 
lay race, but probably the height is over-rated, from the average be¬ 
ing taken from too small a number of individuals, and not including 
women. 
Passing over countries inhabited by negro races, and entering the 
Pacific, we first encounter a race with brown complexion and lank 
hair in the group of the Feejee and Friendly Islands, in about 180 01 
of east longitude. The same race constitutes the inhabitants of the 
Society, the Marquesas, the Lowe Islands, the Navigator Islands, 
Easter Island, and New Zealand, with the Sandwich Islands. 
Although dispeised over little less than sixty degrees of latitude, 
and eighty of longitude, the inhabitants of all these islands speak es¬ 
sentially the same language, and approach so near to each other in 
form, that they must be considered as one race. 
In respect to stature, however, there is either some difference be¬ 
tween them, or there is some discrepancy in the accounts rendered 
of it by voyagers; yet it is not material. Freycinet makes the inha¬ 
bitants of Tahiti 5 feet 8 inches, and those of the Sandwich Islands 
5 feet 9 inches high. This is about the ordinary stature of Euro¬ 
peans. Cook who describes the people of the Marquesas as the 
handsomest of all the South Sea islanders, makes their average 
height from 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet, which is making them some 
3 inches taller than Europeans. 
La Perouse makes the inhabitants of the Navigator Islands from 
6 feet and 1 inch to 0 feet and 2 inches high; but he admits that 
he measured individuals not exceeding 5 feet 8 inches. He des¬ 
cribes them as being equally powerful and athletic as tall, and con¬ 
cludes that, compared with Europeans, they are as the Danish horse 
to the ordinary one of the French provinces. There is, no doubt, 
however, some exaggeration here ; for Captain Wilkes, in his recent 
* Voyage autour du Monde. Paris 1829., 
