tion of the surface of the globe, has flowed from the
same central region, which all history points to as the cradle of our
race, and which may be here described generally as the southern tract of
the great continent of Asia. This prolific clime, while it has on the
one hand sent out its successive detachments of emigrants to occupy the
wide plains of Europe, has on the other discharged its overflowing
numbers upon the islands of the Pacific, and, with the exception of New
Holland[AJ] and a few other lands in its immediate vicinity, the
population of which seems to be of African origin, has, in this way,
gradually spread a race of common parentage over all of them, from those
that constitute what has been called the great Indian Archipelago, in
the immediate neighbourhood of China, to the Sandwich Islands and Easter
Island, in the remotest east of that immense expanse of waters.

The Malay language is spoken, although in many different dialects and
degrees of corruption, throughout the whole of this extensive range,
which, measured in one direction, stretches over nearly half the
equatorial circumference of the globe, and in another over at least
seventy degrees of latitude. The people are all also of the same brown
or copper complexion, by which the Malay is distinguished from the
white man on the one hand, and the negro on the other.

In New Zealand, however, as, indeed, in most of the other seats of this
race, the inhabitants are distinguished from each other by a very
considerable diversity in the shades of what may be called the common
hue. Crozet was so much struck with this circumstance that he does not
hesitate to divide them into three classes--whites, browns, and
blacks,--the last of whom he conceives to be a foreign admixture
received from the neighbouring continent of New Holland, and who, by
their union with the whites, the original inhabitants of the country,
and still decidedly the prevalent race, have produced those of the
intermediate colour.

[Illustration: Two Maori Chiefs--Te Puni, or "Greedy," and Wharepouri,
or "Dark House."]

Whatever may be thought of this hypothesis, it is certain that in some
parts of New Zealand the natives are much fairer than in others. Cook
remarks, in the account of his first voyage, that the people about the
Bay of Islands seemed darker than those he had seen further to the
south; and their colour generally is afterwards described as varying
from a pretty deep black t