These two mixed races comprise in themselves several varieties, but all bear the common denomination of Malagasy or Madecassy.[185]
According to M. Maury, the populations of Polynesia depart the more completely from the Malayan type as we advance in an eastward direction; so that, from the Caroline Islands to the Marquesas, and from the Sandwich Islands to New Zealand, they constitute a sufficiently homogeneous race, the Polynesians or Kanaks.[186] This race is represented in the Sandwich Islands by an almost white variety, whose type very closely approaches the Caucasian race; in New Zealand, on the other hand, by tribes of a dark brown. In the island of Ombaï, situated at the extremity of that vast archipelago which seems in some remote age to have formed an isthmus connecting the Australian with the Asiatic continent, the natives are of a more or less decided olive-brown. Their eyes are deep-set and brilliant, their lips thick, the mouth is large, and the nose generally flat, yet sometimes tolerably well made. They are of medium height, robust, and good figures. They wear a scanty beard, if any; but their hair is long and thick; sometimes they suffer it to flow freely about their shoulders, sometimes they gather it on the top of the head with pieces of vari-coloured stuffs. These savages have a fierce and martial air, are abrupt in their manners, and rapid in their movements. They display extraordinary skill in the management of the bow, and also make use of the Malayan kris or crease, which they carry in their girdle. In battle they protect their persons with a breast-plate and a buckler of buffalo hide; these two pieces of armour are ornamented with shells in regular and pleasing designs. The people of Ombaï are anthropophagic.
If now we transport ourselves to the eastern extremity of Polynesia, the Marquesas Islands, occupied by France in 1842, we shall find there the Pelagian race under one of its handsomest and most amiable types. The Kanaks of this group are not exempt from cannibalism. Nevertheless, before the commerce, civilization, and vices of Europe intruded upon their savage Eden, they lived in a condition of comparative innocence; and the corruption which has since invaded them preserves that open and simple character proper to people in whom the capacity of discerning good from evil is but imperfectly developed.
A traveller, who possesses the threefold merit of being an elegant writer, a judicious observer, and an accurate narrator, M. Max Radiguet, has embodied in an agreeable volume, entitled “The Last Savages,” some lively impressions of a sojourn of several years in the Marquesas, and principally at Noukahiva. It is from his pages that I borrow the following sketch of the islanders of this group.