Researches into the Physical History of Mankind

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: natives of which, though differing from the rest of the stock, yet speak a Polynesian dialect. To the northward of the equator and westward of the meridian of the Tonga Isles, several clusters of greater or less extent are spread through the region intervening between this limit and the Philippine Isles....
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: natives of which, though differing from the rest of the stock, yet speak a Polynesian dialect. To the northward of the equator and westward of the meridian of the Tonga Isles, several clusters of greater or less extent are spread through the region intervening between this limit and the Philippine Isles. The most extensive among them are the Archipelago of the Carolines and that of the Marian Isles. I shall comprise all these groupes under the name of the Micronesian Archipelago, which will be explained in its proper place. Section II.?Of the Nature of the Affinity discovered between the Malayo-Polynesian Languages, and of the different Opinions as to its Origin. The existence of so remarkable a connection between the idioms of nations separated from each other by wide seas, and inhabiting islands at the remote and almost extreme parts of the Great Southern Ocean, admits of two explanations, each of which has found advocates. The most obvious supposition is that these islands were first peopled by families emigrating from one spot and originating from the same stock. This is the hypothesis that was adopted by the first voyagers who observed the phenomena of resemblance, and maintained by Mr. Marsden, who first investigated with accuracy the history of the Indian Archipelago. By Marsden the insular nations were considered as colonies from the original Malays whose abode was in the Island of Sumatra. Their common speech was termed by him the Great Polynesian language. The idioms of all the islanders were supposed to have become diversified through lapse of time and various accidents, but to have been originally the same. He thus expresses himself. The idiom of the Malays is a branch or dialect of the widely extended language prevailing throughout the islands of the Archip...