I have alluded in a preceding part of this work (Volume 1) to the circumstance that the small vocabulary obtained at the Louisiade may, along with others, throw some light upon the question: whence has Australia been peopled?
ORIGIN OF THE AUSTRALIAN RACE.
It may safely be assumed that the aborigines of the whole of Australia (exclusive of Van Diemen's Land) have had one common origin; in physical character the natives of Cape York seem to me to differ in no material respect from those of New South Wales, South or Western Australia, or Port Essington,* and, I believe I am borne out by facts in stating that an examination of vocabularies and grammars (more or less complete) from widely remote localities, still further tends to prove the unity of the Australian tribes as a race.
(*Footnote. M. Hombron (attached to D'Urville's last expedition as surgeon and naturalist) considers--as the result of personal observation--that the aborigines of New South Wales exhibit certain points of physical difference from those of the North Coast of Australia, meaning, I suppose, by the latter, those natives seen by him at Raffles Bay and Port Essington. I may also mention that M. Hombron considers the Northern Australians to be a distinct subdivision of the Australian race, in which he also classes the inhabitants of the smaller islands of Torres Strait (as Warrior Island for instance) attributing the physical amelioration of the latter people to the fact of their possessing abundant means of subsistence afforded by the reefs among which they live, and the necessity of possessing well constructed canoes as their only means of procuring fish and dugong, stated by him to constitute the chief food of the Torres Strait islanders. Voyage au Pole Sud, etc. Zoologie tome 1 par M. Hombron pages 313, 314 et 317.)
The two places from one of which the Australian population may be supposed to have been more IMMEDIATELY derived, are Timor on the one hand and New Guinea on the other: in the former case the first settlers would probably have landed somewhere on the north-west coast, in the latter, at Cape York.
Mr. Eyre believes that there are "grounds sufficient to hazard the opinion that Australia was first peopled on its north-western coast, between the parallels of 12 and 16 degrees South latitude. From whence we might surmise that three grand divisions had branched off from the parent tribe, and that from the offsets of these the whole continent has been overspread."* Proceeding still further Mr. Eyre has very ingeniously attempted to explain the gradual peopling of Australia, and even indicate the probable routes taken by the first settlers during the long periods of years which must have elapsed before the whole continent was overrun by the tribes now collectively forming the Australian race. Dr. Prichard, when alluding to the probable mode of dispersion of the black tribes of the Indian Archipelago, conjectures that one of the branches during the migratory march probably passed from Java to Timor, and from thence to Australia.** Dr. Latham also inclines to the belief that Australia was peopled from Timor and not from New Guinea, judging, in the absence of positive proof, from the probability that "occupancy had begun in Australia before migration across Torres Strait had commenced in New Guinea," inferred "from the physical differences between the Australian and the Papuan, taken with the fact that it is scarcely likely that the Papuans of Torres Strait would have failed in extending themselves in Australia had that island been unoccupied." Timor also is much nearer than New Guinea to the REMOTE source--assumed to be the continent of Asia--whence the Australians have been derived.***
(*Footnote. Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia etc. by E.J. Eyre Volume 2 page 405.)
(**Footnote. Researches into the Physical History of Mankind Volume 5 page 214.)
(***Footnote. Natural History of the Varieties of Man by R.G. Latham, M.D. pages 257 and 253.)
The unity of the Australian race being admitted implies one common origin, and that such was not derived from New Guinea, can scarcely, I think, be doubted. Upon examining the neighbourhood of the point of contact between the New Guinea-men and the Australians, we find Cape York and the neighbouring shores of the mainland occupied by genuine and unmixed Australians, and the islands of Torres Strait with the adjacent coast of New Guinea by equally genuine Papuans; intermediate in position between the two races, and occupying the point of junction at the Prince of Wales Islands we find the Kowrarega tribe of blacks. At first I was inclined to regard the last more as degraded Papuans than as improved Australians: I am now, however, fully convinced that they afford an example of an Australian tribe so altered by contact with the Papuan tribes of the adjacent islands as at length to resemble the latter in most of their physical, intellectual and moral characteristics. Thus the Kowraregas have acquired from their island neighbours the art of cultivating the ground, and their superior dexterity in constructing and navigating large canoes, together with some customs--such as that of preserving the skulls of their enemies as trophies: while they retain the use of the spear and throwing-stick, practise certain mysterious ceremonies connected with the initiation of boys to the rights of manhood--supposed to be peculiar to the Australian race--and hold the females in the same low and degraded position which they occupy throughout Australia.