Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/75

 or round piece of shell on a cord, and keeping a bladder in the air by patting it with the hands, are favorite games. They also amuse themselves with miniature spears and bow and arrows, catching fish, which they cook for themselves on the shore. They are left to do what they like, and know nothing of the tasks of school, the troubles of keeping their clothes clean, or the miseries of being washed—troubles that vex the lives of almost all civilized children. According to Mr. Turner, the villages of the Motu are by no means clean, all manner of filth being left about unheeded; and, as this agrees with most other descriptions, we must conclude that the model village already referred to is quite exceptional in its cleanliness and order.

Mr. Turner thinks the Motu are colonists from some other land, while he considers the Koiari of the interior to be "evidently the aborigines of this part of New Guinea." Mr. Stone, on the other hand, classes them together as slightly differing tribes of the same race, the one being a little more advanced than the other; and he considers the whole eastern peninsula of New Guinea to be peopled by a race of Polynesian blood, who, in some far-distant time, found their way to the coast, intermingled with the native Papuan tribes, and gradullygradually [sic] drove them westward. There have thus resulted a number of separate tribes, showing various degrees of intermixture, the Polynesian blood predominating on the coast, the Papuan in the interior; one small tribe alone, the Kirapuno, being more distinctly Polynesian. How complete is the intermixture, and how difficult it is to determine the limits of the two races, are shown by the opinion of Mr. S. McFarlane, who says that though he at first thought the people of Katow River and those of Redscar Bay to be quite distinct, the former Papuan and the latter Malayan (or more properly Polynesian), yet, after five years' acquaintance with them, he believes them to of the same race; while he considers the tribes of the interior to be distinct, and to be true Papuans. The coast people he thinks to be the result of an intermixture of Malays, Polynesians, Arabs, Chinese, and Papuans.

Dr. Comrie (of the surveying ship Basilisk) believes that all the tribes on the northeast coast, from East Cape to Astrolabe Bay, are Papuans; but his description of them shows that they have a slight infusion of Polynesian blood, and many Polynesian customs. One thing is very clear, that neither in physical nor mental characteristics do these people show any resemblance whatever to Malays, who are a very different race from the Polynesian. The graceful figures, the woolly or curly hair, the arched noses, the use of tattooing, the ignorance of. pottery making, the gay and laughter-loving disposition, the talkativeness of the women, the lying, thievishness, and beggary, widely separate them from the Malay; while all these peculiarities support the view of their being a race formed by a mixture of Polynesian men with Papuan or Melanesian women, the former having perhaps arrived in successive waves of immigration, thus causing the coast tribes, and those nearest the