Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/33

CH'APTEK II. OEIGIN AND POLITY. In considering the origin of the present inhabitants of Fiji, we seek in vain for a single ray of tradition or historical record to gmde ns through the darkness of a remote antiquity. The native songs are silent in the matter, and no hint of a former immigration is to be heard : the people have had no intercourse with other nations, except as visited by them ; and the popular belief is, that they never occupied any country but that on which they now dwell. Hence can only be inferred that the period of the Fijians' residence in their islands is to be placed far back at a very early date, probably as remote as the peopling of the American continent. Uniformity of customs and habits, resemblance of religious belief and practice, and, still more, philological affinities, together with physical analogies, supply the data whence may be argued with some degree of precision the branch of the human race to which the Fijian belongs, and perhaps conjecture may be supplied with a surer footing in endeavouring to track the path by which he came to his present home. Differences of colour, physical conformation, and language, com- bine to form a separating line between the East and West Polynesians sufficiently clear, until we reach Fiji, where the distinguishing peculiari- ties seem to meet, and many of them to blend, thus betokening a con- fluence of the two races. At the east end of the group the Asiatic pe- culiarities are found marked, but die away as we go westward, giving place to such as are decidedly African, but not Negro. Excepting the Tongans, the Fijian is equal in physical development to the islanders eastward, yet distinct from them in colour, in which particular he ap- proaches the pure Papiaan Negro ; to whom, in form and feature, he is, however, vastly superior. Many of his customs distinguish him from his neighbours, although he is by language united to them all. Directed by such facts, there can be little doubt of the Fijian's con- nection with the darker races of Asia. His ancestors may be regarded