[11] It is more convenient to give this name to the dark-skinned Australian aborigines, inasmuch as the term "Australian" now means a white man of European ancestry.
[12] The Tasmanians have been extinct since 1876 or 1877.
[13] Here being dwarfish in stature they are styled Negrito, a Spanish diminutive of Negro. The pigmy negro type is not confined to the Philippine archipelago, but reappears in some of the south-eastern Malay islands and in New Guinea.
[14] The seafaring vessels of the Polynesians were as much of an advance on the dug-out canoes of the negroid Papuans as these last were superior to the rafts and bark coracles of the Australoids. The chief feature in the Polynesian canoe was the outrigger, sometimes double. This was a long piece of wood floating on the water parallel to the canoe and fastened to two poles or sticks projecting horizontally from the side of the canoe.
[15] There are legends and evidence—such as shell heaps—in New Zealand indicating that the islands were first populated by a Papuan race akin to the peoples of New Caledonia and New Guinea. This is difficult of belief because of the isolated character of New Zealand and the exceedingly stormy seas which cut it off from other lands to the north and west. Yet the existence of a negroid element among the Maoris of New Zealand is undoubted. It may have been due to the earliest Polynesian invaders bringing with them slaves and captives from Fiji. That the Maoris kept slightly in touch with the world of Asia after their colonization of New Zealand is shown by the discovery some years ago in the interior of New Zealand of an Indian bronze bell dating from about the fourteenth century A.C., with an inscription on it in the Tamil language of southern India. It was a ship's bell belonging to a vessel presumably manned by Muhammadans, probably Malays. Either, therefore, a Malay ship or one from the south of India discovered New Zealand some six hundred years ago, or reached the Melanesian or Samoan islands of the western Pacific, and there left its bell to be carried off to New Zealand as a treasure. The Malays certainly traded to the New Hebrides. It should also be noted that in many other outlying Pacific islands besides New Zealand, there are traditions and even the remains of implements to suggest a former wide migration eastward of the Negroid type—even as far as Hawaii.
[16] Indonesian is the name applied to the light-skinned people of Caucasian features found in Sumatra and Papuasia.
[17] The domestic fowl had even reached New Caledonia but not any part of Australia or New Zealand.
[18] In my volume on the Pioneers in India and Southern Asia I have referred to the story told to Ludovico di Varthema by a Malay captain of the vessel in which he travelled, according to which Malays had penetrated southwards into seas where the ice obstructed their passage, and the day in wintertime became shortened to a period of four hours. This would look as though the Malays had anticipated us in Antarctic discovery.
The names of the French voyagers who may have sighted Australia in the first half of the sixteenth century were Binot Paulmier de Gonneville, who, sailing across the Indian Ocean after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, was blown out of his course and landed on the shores of a great island, which he believed to be Terra Australis (perhaps only Madagaskar); and Guillaume le Testu, who, starting apparently from Marseilles in 1530, also rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and in directing his course for the Spice Islands apparently stumbled on the coast of West Australia. The southern continent is certainly indicated on an old French map of 1542, now in the possession of the British Museum. But this discovery of the Provençal sailor is based on slender evidence.
[19] This word is derived from two Greek roots meaning "Black Islanders". There is much difficulty in deciding what is Papuan and what Melanesian when classifying the peoples of the Solomon Islands and Bismarck Archipelago. There is a strong infusion of Melanesian blood in Hawaii.