typical, it is true, but to which an easy transition can be traced from the most characteristic members of the type.
J). The brown Polynesians, Malayo-Polynesians, Maforis, Sawaioris, or Kanakas, as they have been variously called, seen in their greatest purity in the Samoan, Tongan, and Eastern Polynesian Islands, are still more modified, and possess less of the characteristic Mongolian features; but still it is difficult to place them anywhere else in the system. The large infusion of the Melanesian element throughout the Pacific must never be forgotten in accounting for the characters of the people now inhabiting the islands, an element in many respects so diametrically opposite to the Mongolian, that it would materially alter the characters, especially of the hair and beard, which has been with many authors a stumbling-block to the affiliation of the Polynesian with the Mongol stock. The mixture is physically a fine one, and in some proportions produces a combination, as seen, for instance, in the Maories of New Zealand, which in all definable characters approaches quite as near, or nearer, to the Caucasian type, than to either of the stocks from which it may be presumably derived. This resemblance has led some writers to infer a real extension of the Caucasian element at some very early period with the Pacific Islands, and to look upon their inhabitants as the product of a mingling of all three great types of men. Though this is a very plausible theory, it rests on little actual proof, as the combination of Mongolo-Malayan and Melanesian characters in different degrees to the local variations certain to arise in communities so isolated from each other and exposed to such varied conditions as the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands would probably account for all the modifications observed among them.
E. The native population (before the changes wrought by the European conquest) of the great Continent of America, excluding the Eskimo, present, considering the vast extent of the country they inhabit and the great differences of climate and other surrounding conditions, a remarkable similarity of essential characters, with much diversity of detail.
The construction of the numerous American languages, of which as many as twelve hundred have been distinguished, is said to point to unity of origin, as, though widely different in many respects, they are all, or nearly all, constructed on the same general grammatical principle—that called polysynthesis—which differs from that of the languages of any of the Old World nations. The mental characteristics of all the American tribes have much that is in common; and the very different stages of culture to which they had attained at the time of the conquest, as that of the Incas and Aztecs, and the hunting or fishing tribes of the North and South, which have been quoted as evidence of diversities of race, were not greater than those between different nations of Europe, as Gauls and Germans on the one hand, and Greeks and Romans on the other, in the time of Julius Cæsar. Yet all these
