3. That the differentiæ between the lighter and darker Protonesians is referable to the influences of Asiatic civilization.
The observations of Mr. Blaxland, taken along with the colour of the people, lead to the inference that the Fijis were peopled from Kelænonesia. The language, however, is against this. The conflict of difficulties is best reconciled by considering them a mixed race; of which the older element belongs to the line of population which supplied Kelænonesia with its inhabitants, the newer to the Polynesian system.
If this view be unsatisfactory we must consider them as members of the darker Polynesian population, with its differential characteristics at their maximum—a view probable enough of itself, but rendered suspicious by the fact of its occurring so precisely in the neighbourhood of Kelænonesia.
That they form a true transition between the Kelænonesians and Polynesians, as a continuation of a line of population from the New Hebrides to Polynesia, is of all views the most improbable.
In the opinion of the present writer, the Fiji Islands are the localities where the stream of population which went round New Guinea met, and amalgamated with the extremity of the line that came across that country; the antagonism between the evidence of the language, the evidence of the physical conformation being the effect of the intermixture.
Respecting the ethnological relations of the Andaman and Nicobarian islanders, I am not prepared with an opinion.
The following facts connected with the Polynesian languages, are laid before the reader, less for the sake of enlarging the list of Polynesian peculiarities than as a preparation for certain philological phænomena, which will occur in the ethnology of America, and with the view of showing a process by which language, over and above the changes which are brought about by natural changes, may be modified artificially—a point upon which we have few data, but plenty of extreme opinions.
Ceremonial language of parts of Polynesia.—The Samoans, ceremonious to each other, are preeminently so towards their chiefs; one of their methods of showing respect being to eschew certain words in common use, when addressing a superior, and to substitute for them others, which are considered more refined. Hence, a careful speaker will never address a higher personage in the terms appropriate to an inferior one. To a common man, on entering a house, the salutation is ua mai=you have come.
To a householder, ua alala mai.
To a low chief, ua malui mai.