Ethnical Elements.
Returning to the Papuan lands proper, in the insular groups west of New Guinea we enter one of the most entangled ethnical regions in the world. Here are, no doubt, a few islands such as the Aru group, mainly inhabited by full-blood Papuans, men who furnished Wallace with the models on which he built up his true Papuan type, which has since been vainly assailed by so many later observers. But in others—Ceram, Buru, Timor, and so on to Flores—diverse ethnical and linguistic elements are intermingled in almost hopeless confusion. Discarding the term "Alfuro" as of no ethnical value[337], we find the whole area west to about 120° E. longitude[338] occupied in varying proportions by pure and mixed representatives of three distinct stocks: Negro (Papuans), Mongoloid (Malayans), and Caucasic (Indonesians). From the data supplied by Crawfurd, Wallace, Forbes, Ten Kate and other trustworthy observers, I have constructed the subjoined table, in which the east Malaysian islands are disposed according to the constituent elements of their inhabitants[339]:
Aru Group—True Papuans dominant; Indonesians (Korongoei) in the interior.
Kei Group—Malayans; Indonesians; Papuan strain everywhere.
Timor; Wetta; Timor Laut—Mixed Papuans, Malayans and Indonesians; no pure type anywhere.
Serwatti Group—Malayans with slight trace of black blood (Papuan or Negrito).
Roti and Sumba—Malayans.
Savu—Indonesians.
Flores; Solor; Adonera; Lomblen; Pantar; Allor—Papuans pure or mixed dominant; Malayans in the coast towns.
Buru—Malayans on coast; reputed Papuans, but more probably Indonesians in interior.