I believe this because the geographical positions of the countries suggest it.
I believe it, because the older and more aboriginal populations of Timor and Rotti approach, in physical character, the Australian.
I believe it, because the proportion of words in the vocabularies alluded to is greater than can be attributed to accident; whilst the words themselves are not of that kind which is introduced by intercourse. Besides which, no such intercourse either occurs at the present moment, or can be shown to have ever existed.
Australia agrees with parts of Africa, South[216] America, and Polynesia, in being partially intertropical and wholly south of the equator—no part of continental Asia or Europe coming under these conditions. But it differs from Polynesia in being continental rather than insular in climate; from South America in the absence of great rivers and vast alluvial tracts; and from Africa in being wholly isolated from the Northern Hemisphere. It is with South Africa, however, that its closest analogies exist. Both have but small water-systems; both vast tracts of elevated barren country; and both a distinctive vegetation. The animal kingdoms, however, of the two areas have next to nothing in common. The comparative non-existence of Australian mammalia, higher in rank than the marsupials, is a subject for the zoologist. Ethnology only indicates its bearing upon the sustenance of man. Poor in the vegetable elements of food, and beggarly in respect to the animal, the vast continental expanse of Australia supports the scantiest aboriginal population of the world, and nourishes it worst. The steppes of Asia feed the horse; the tundras, the reindeer; the circumpolar icebergs, the seal; and each of these comparatively inhospitable tracts is more kindly towards its Mongolian, its Samoeid, and its Eskimo occupant, than Australia with its intertropical climate, but wide and isolated deserts.[217]
Except that his hair (which is often either straight, or only crisp or wavy) has not attained its maximum of frizziness, and has seldom or never been called woolly, the Australian is a Semang under a South African climate, on a South African soil, and with more than a South African isolation.
Few Australians count as far as five, and fewer still beyond it. This paucity of numerals is South American as well—the Brazilian and Carib, and other systems of numeration being equally limited.
The sound of s is wanting in the majority of Australian languages. So it is in many of the Polynesian.
The social constitution is of extreme simplicity. Many degrees removed from the industrial, almost as far from the agricultural state, the Australian is hardly even a hunter—except so far as the kangaroo or wombat are beasts of chase. Families—scarcely large enough to be called tribes or clans—wander over wide but allotted areas. Nowhere is the approach to an organized polity so imperfect.
This makes the differences between section and section of the Australian population, both broad and numerous. Nevertheless, the fundamental unity of the whole is not only generally admitted, but—what is better—it has been well illustrated.[218] The researches of Captain Grey, Teichelmann, Schurrmann, and others, have chiefly contributed to this.
The appreciation of certain apparent characteristic peculiarities has been less satisfactory; differences having been over-rated and points of similarity wondered at rather than investigated.