er five feet, complexion olive yellow, head
brachy-cephalous or round, cheek-bones prominent, eyes black and
slightly oblique, nose small but not flat, nostrils dilated, hands small
and delicate, legs thin and weak, hair black, coarse and lank, beard
absent or scant;" but these Indonesians to whom belong most of the
indigenous inhabitants of Celebes, are taller and have fairer or light
brown complexions and regular features, connecting them with the brown
Polynesians of the Eastern Pacific "who may be regarded as their
descendants," and Professor KEANE accounts for their presence by
assuming "a remote migration of the Caucasic race to South-Eastern Asia,
of which evidences are not lacking in Camboja and elsewhere, and a
further onward movement, first to the Archipelago and then East to the
Pacific." It is needless to say that the aborigines themselves have the
haziest and most unscientific notion of their own origin, as the
following account, gravely related to me by a party of Buludupihs, will
exemplify:--

"_The Origin of the Buludupih Race._

In past ages a Chinese[3] settler had taken to wife a daughter
of the aborigines, by whom he had a female child. Her parents
lived in a hilly district (_Bulud_ = hill), covered with a large
forest tree, known by the name of _opih_. One day a jungle fire
occurred, and after it was over, the child jumped down from the
house (native houses are raised on piles off the ground), and
went up to look at a half burnt _opih_ log, and suddenly
disappeared and was never seen again. But the parents heard the
voice of a spirit issue from the log, announcing that it had
taken the child to wife and that, in course of time, the
bereaved parents would find an infant in the jungle, whom they
were to consider as the offspring of the marriage, and who
would become the father of a new race. The prophecy of the
spirit was in due time fulfilled."

It somewhat militates against the correctness of this history that the
Buludupihs are distinguished by the absence of Mongolian features.

The general appellation given to the aborigines by the modern Malays--to
whom reference will be made later on--is _Dyak_, and they are divided
into numerous tribes, speaking very different dialects of the
Malayo-Polynesian stock, and known by distinctive names, the origin of
which is generally obscure, at least in British North Borneo, where
these names are _