THE PAPUANS. (Sydney Morning Herald.)

Otago Witness, Issue 1129, 19 July 1873, Page 3

THE PAPUANS. (Sydney Morning Herald. )

We are at present so ignorant that ethnologists still dispute a3 to what race the Papuans belong. By the aid of missionaries and traders we have now attained a tolerably complete acquaintance with the Polynesian character and modes of thinking ; and it is therefoie just now an inquiry of no little interest as to whether the Papuans are, or are not, a Polynesian race. There happens to be an interesting article on this very subjeot in a late number of the Contemporary Review, in which the Rev. T. J. Whitmee, a missionary at Samoa, seeks to controvert some opinions expressed by Mr Wallace, in his work on the Malay Archipelago. Mr Wallace, whose fame as a naturalist is likely to give great weight to hia opinions, denies that the Malayans and Papuans are two distinct races as is generally believed, and he considers them all, from the Papuans to the New Zealanders, and from the Sandwich Islanders to the Fijians, as merely varying forms of a great Oceanic or Polynesian race — descendants of the people that once inhabited the continent where the Pacific Ocean now flows. Mr Whitmee, who has had a long experience as a missionary, thinks that Mr Wallace is wrong, and that if he had ever visited Polynesia personally he would not have propounded his present opinions. Mr Whitmee's opinion is that the brown and the black Polynesians differ essentially in almost every particular, and he intimates that in a future paper he may go more fully into the discussion of these differences. But he maintains the identity between the brown Polynesians and the Malays, and the black Polynesians and the Papuans. His article is mostly de* i voted to showing the identity between the brown Polynesians and the Malays ; and he shows this both as to their physical characteristics, their mental and moral characteristics, their habits, and their language. He states that Mr Wallace's descriptions of the Malays were also pro tanto descriptions of the brown Polynesians, and that the similarities of language are altogether too radical, to be explicable as the result of recent inf ermixture of the races, or as communicatel by travellers. His personal qualifications ! or forming an opinion on the subject he states to be that he has resided for several ypars in one of the principal groups of the Smth. Pacific, and has visited sevual others — that he has also seen natives of every group south of the Equator, with the exception of the Marquesas, Santa Cruz, and Solomon Islands, and that he can speak with confidence respecting the character- of all the islands between 165 degrees east and 140 degrees west longitude, including New Zealand and the Sandwich Islands. As a result of this experience, he states that there would be no great difficulty in shuv\ m.{ that two strongly contrastedraces iuhabi i the islands of the Pacific — the Malays occupying exclusively the larger eastern portion, and the Papuans the western, while in a few islands where the two mccc, there is to a certain extent a mingling of the races. With respect to the Papuan or black Polynesian races, he states that they have the appearance of the negro, that their hair is invariably frizzly, that they are far more active, lively, and impulsive than the brown Polynesians ; that they are more systematically savage, and in their heathen state almost invariably cannibals ; and that their languages are as full of consonants as those of the brown Polynesians are full of vowels, and as harsh and grating to the ear as the others are soft and flowing. He thinks we may not only safely identify the black Polynesians as being intimately related to the Papuans, but that we may adopt Professor Huxley's opinions, also advocated by Dr Bleek, that there is an ethnological connection between the Papuans and the South Africans. He mentions also that the brown Polynesians wake very inefficient pioneer missionaries amongst the Papuan races, because they cannot pronounce the words of their dialect owing to the great number of consonants they contain. The two races exist si'i<! l>y side in some of the New Hebrides, 1 ait remain quite distinct and widely separated by their dialects. If Mr Whitmee fulfils us promise of following up this p iper by another j>roving the identity ot the black Polynesians and the Papuans, it will under present circumstances have a special interest, as, from the knowledge already obtained of the black Polynesians, the natives of New Guinea may be approached with some chance of success.

The pine woods of Scandinavia are likely to be turned into " broadsheets." A Dr Silchester has been for some time in Sweden making experiments on the natural sawdust, and has succeeded in producing a pulp, of which excellent paper can be made.