Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/42

 CHAPTER II. SOCIAL REGULATIONS. DIVISIONS OF THE PEOPLE. KINSHIP AND MARRIAGE CONNEXION.

will be no attempt made here to deal with the Ethnology of Melanesia. The origin of the Melanesian people, in their various seats and in their various divisions, may be taken to be unknown; as they themselves apparently have no traditions and no opinions about the matter, and in the stories which pass among them represent themselves to have been created where they are. The variety of their languages, and to a much less extent of their arts and customs, shews that they have not come in one body into the islands they now inhabit; an examination of their languages discovers a very considerable underlying sameness; and the present book may be taken perhaps as an evidence of a large general resemblance in the religious beliefs and practices, the customs and ways of life, which prevail in the islands which are here embraced in a common view. As knowledge extends and detailed information is brought in from all sides, a connexion will no doubt be traced with regions beyond Melanesia; the loom, for example, peculiar to Santa Cruz alone among the islands here treated of, may connect the people of that group with those of the Caroline Islands; many things in common between Fiji and Madagascar besides language may bring those countries and much that lies between them into whatever ethnographic province the latter is held to belong to; but to endeavour to trace such connexion is beyond the present purpose, which is confined to the exhibition of the Melanesian people as they