8 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
5. Eaces of Mankind. 
In the variety of human races it exhibits, and the 
interesting problems which these present to the anthro¬ 
pologist, the Eastern Archipelago is hardly surpassed by 
the great continental divisions of the globe. Concerning 
the number of distinct races found within its boundaries 
there are still discrepancies of opinion. For the sake of 
convenience they may be divided into the two groups of 
brown and dark, the former including the true Malays, 
the Indonesians or Pre-Malays, and the allied race of 
Eastern Polynesians, and the latter the Papuans, the 
Australians, and the Negritos. 
The true Malays (see frontispiece), and the Indo¬ 
nesians who were the earlier settlers of these lands, 
inhabit all the western part of the Malay Archipelago 
from Sumatra to the Moluccas. To the eastward of the 
latter group are the Papuans, whose headquarters are New 
Guinea, but who range to Timor and Plores on the south¬ 
west, and to the Fiji Islands on the east (see illustrations 
pp. 399, 420). The Australians form a race admitted by 
most authorities to be distinct. The islands of Eastern 
Polynesia are for the most part inhabited by a brown people, 
who have been usually classed with the Malays on account 
of some similarity of language and colour, and erroneously 
termed Malayo-Polynesians. They present, however, so 
many and important differences, both physical and 
mental, from the true Malays, that the best authorities 
are agreed in considering them to be altogether distinct. 
Finally, we have the dark, dwarf, curly-haired Negritos, 
confined, so far as is known, to the four or five largest 
islands of the Philippines, 1 and probably allied to the 
1 The Karons of N. W. New Guinea are also considered by some writers 
to be of Negrito stock. 
