The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

—XXII.] GILOLO. 243of bees and wasps, and some small but interesting beetles.Two or three new birds were obtained by my liunters, and byincessant inquiries and jji-omises I succeeded in getting thenatives to bring me some land shells, among which was a veryfine and handsome one, Helix pyrostoma. I was, however,completely wasting my time here compared with what I mightl)e doing in a good locality, and after a week returned toTernate, quite disappointed with my first attempts at collectingin Gilolo.In the country round about Sahoe, and in the interior, thereis a large population of indigenes, numbers of whom came dailyinto the village, bringing their produce for sale, while otherswere engaged as labourers by the Chinese and Ternate traders.A careful examination convinced me that these i^eople areradically distinct from all the Malay races. There stature andtheir features, as well as tlieir disposition and habits, are almostthe same as those of the Papuans ;their hair is semi-Papuanneither straight, smooth, and glossy, like all true ]\Ialays', norso_ frizzly and woolly as the perfect Papuan type, but alwayscrisp, waved, and rough, such as often occurs among the truePapuans, but never among the Malays. Their colour alone isoften exactly that of _ the Malay, or even ligliter. Of coursethere has been intermixture, and there occur occasionally individualswhich it is difficult to classify ; but in most cases thelarge, somewhat aquiline nose, with elongated apex, the tallstature, the waved hair, the bearded face, and hairy body, aswell as the less reserved manner and louder voice, unmistakablyproclaim the Papuan type. Here then I had discovered theexact boundary line between the Malay and Papuan i-aces, andat a spot where no other writer had expected it. I was verymuch i^leased at this determination, as it gave me a clue to oneof the most difficult problems in Ethnology, and enabled me inmany_ other places to separate the two races, and to unraveltheir intermixtures.On my return from Waigiou in 1860, I stayed some days onthe southern extremity of Gilolo, but, beyond seeing somethingmore of its structure and general character, obtained very littleadditional information. It is only in tlie nortliern peninsulathat there are any indigenes, the whole of the rest of the island,with Batchian and the other islands westwai'd, being exclusivelyinhabited by Malay tribes, allied to those of Ternate and Tidore.This would seem to indicate tliat the Alfuros were a comparativelyrecent immigration, and that they liad come from thenorth or east, perhaps from some of the islands of tlie Pacific.It is otherwise difficult to understand how so many fertiledistricts should jDossess no true indigenes.Gilolo, or Halmaheira as it is called by the Malays and Dutcli,seems to have been recently modified by upheaval and subsidence.In 1673, a mountain is said to have been upheaved atGamokonora on the nortliern peninsula. All the parts that 1R 2 .