It is but a step, as it were, across Bass’s Straits to Tasmania.  Neither climate nor the characteristic forms of vegetable or animal life change largely on the south side of the Straits, but the early voyagers found Man singularly different from him on the north side.  The skin of the Tasmanian was dark, though he lived between parallels of latitude corresponding with those of middle Europe in our own hemisphere; his jaws projected, his head was long and narrow; his civilization was about on a footing with that of the Australian, if not lower, for I cannot discover that the Tasmanian understood the use of the throwing-stick.  But he differed from the Australian in his woolly, negro-like hair, whence the name of NEGRITO, which has been applied to him and his congeners.

Such Negritos—­differing more or less from the Tasmanian, but agreeing with him in dark skin and woolly hair—­occupy New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, the Louisiade Archipelago; and stretching to the Papuan Islands, and for a doubtful extent beyond them to the north and west, form a sort of belt, or zone, of Negrito population, interposed between the Australians on the west and the inhabitants of the great majority of the Pacific islands on the east.

The cranial characters of the Negritos vary considerably more than those of their skin and hair, the most notable circumstance being the strong Australian aspect which distinguishes many Negrito skulls, while others tend rather towards forms common in the Polynesian islands.

In civilization, New Caledonia exhibits an advance upon Tasmania, and, farther north, there is a still greater improvement.  But the bows and arrows, the perched houses, the outrigger canoes, the habits of betel-chewing and of kawa-drinking, which abound more or less among the northern Negritos, are probably to be regarded not as the products of an indigenous civilization, but merely as indications of the extent to which foreign influences have modified the primitive social state of these people.

From Tasmania or New Caledonia, to New Zealand or Tongataboo, is again but a brief voyage; but it brings about a still more notable change in the aspect of the indigenous population than that effected by the passage of Bass’s Straits.  Instead of being chocolate-coloured people, the Maories and Tongans are light brown; instead of woolly, they have straight, or wavy, black hair.  And if from New Zealand, we travel some 5,000 miles east to Easter Island; and from Easter Island, for as great a distance north-west, to the Sandwich Islands; and thence 7,000 miles, westward and southward, to Sumatra; and even across the Indian Ocean, into the interior of Madagascar, we shall everywhere meet with people whose hair is straight or wavy, and whose skins exhibit various shades of brown.  These are the Polynesians, Micronesians, Indonesians, whom Latham has grouped together under the common title of AMPHINESIANS.

The cranial characters of these people, as of the Negritos, are less constant than those of their skin and hair.  The Maori has a long skull; the Sandwich Islander a broad skull.  Some, like these, have strong brow ridges; others, like the Dayaks and many Polynesians, have hardly any nasal indentation.