Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/55

I Deducting, therefore, the hypothetical Malay ethnical element, which, if it exists at all, may be considered as merely local in Northern Australia, there is yet a limited Papuan or Melanesian element in Northern or North-eastern Australia, which cannot be altogether attributed to the original cross of the primitive Tasmanians.

I was much struck, when comparing some men from Prince of Wales Island with other men from the Cloncurry River, on the mainland, by the marked Papuan character of the former, and the marked Australian character of the latter. The intermixture through friendly intercourse between the Kaurarega of Prince of Wales Island and the Gudang of Cape York is well known.

Deducting these various elements, the apparent strong cross of the Tasmanian stock, and the certainly small admixture on the northern coast due to visits by the Bugis and the Papuan Islanders, there remains a large residuum to which the distinctiveness of the Australian type may be attributed.

To which of the great divisions of the human family may this Australian stock, on which the Tasmanian scion has been grafted, be assigned? Here is a difficult problem; but this much may with safety be asserted, it is not Ethiopic or Mongolian, and leaving out the American stocks, which can scarcely be seriously considered, there remains only the so-called Caucasian as the great division to which the primitive type of the Australian may be referred.

In considering all the facts before me bearing upon the question of the origin of the Tasmanians and the Australians, I have been much impressed by the immense periods of time which seem to be essential to any solution of the problem.

The level of culture of the Tasmanians has been termed by Dr. E. B. Tylor "Eolithic," and that of the Australians probably stands in the Neolithic, if not as regards some tribes on the border between that and the Paleolithic age.