The Eel group of ten islands adjoin the Ant Islands. ICe, Kei, or Ki is prefixed to the names of all their villages. The Great Kei is about the size of Tanakeka, an island near Macassar. The men profess Muhammadanism, but eat hog's flesh. The Papuan women of Ki are not secluded ; the children are merry, noisy, and have the nigger grin, and amongst the men is a noisy confusion of tongues and excitement on every occasion. The Ki group form the northern of the south-easterly islands. The islands are covered with luxuriant forests. Maratigo and Banyaro woods are well adapted for masts. The islands are occupied by two races, one of them the Papuan, who make cocoanut oil, build boats, and make wooden bowls. Their boats are from small planked canoes to prahus of 20 to 30 tons burden. They build the skin first, and fit on the knees and bends and ribs. Money is not used, but every transaction is in kind. The Papuan wear a waist cloth of cotton or bark. The other race are Muhammadans, who were driven out of Banda. They wear cotton clothing. They are probably a brown race, more allied to Malays, but their mixed descendants have great varieties of hair, colour, and features, graduating between the Malay and Papuan tribes.
Ceram is the largest island of the Moluccas. It is 162 miles long, but its greatest breadth is only 42 miles. The island is one long mountain chain that sets off transverse spurs, and some of the peaks are 5000 or 6000 feet in height. The people of Ceram approach nearer to the Papuan type than those of Gilolo. They are darker in colour, and a number of them have the frizzly Papuan hair ; their features are harsh and pro minent, and the women are far less engaging than those of the Malay race. The Papua or Alfuro man of Ceram gathers his frizzly hair into a flat circular knot over the left temple, and places cylinders of wood as thick as one's fingers, and coloured red at the ends, in the lobes of the ears. They are very nearly in a state of nature, and go almost naked, but armlets and anklets of woven grass or of silver, with necklaces of beads or small fruits, complete their attire. The women have similar ornaments, but wear their hair loose. All are tall, with a dark brown skin, and well marked Papuan physiognomy. The Alfuro or Papuan race are the predominant type in the island.
In Celebes, the Trans-Javau or Timorian band, and the Moluccas, is a large and important class of Indonesians, who graduate between the Anuam type, the Burman, and the Negrito. The most prevalent head, or that of the predominant, is ovoid, but it is somewhat Burman or Indo-Burman in nose, eye, and colour. • Celebes is intersected by the equator, leaving a small portion of it in the northern and the mass in the southern hemi sphere. Its greatest length is about 500 miles, but
its greatest breadth does not exceed 100 ; and in some places it is hardly one-third of this width. Celebes may be considered to be the focus of an original and independent civilisation, which pro bably sprang up amongst the most advanced of the nations which occupy it, called by themselves Wugi, and by the Malaya, and after them by Europeans, Bugi. In material civilisation the Bugi are equal to the Malays.
Philippines.—The woolly-haired tribes are more numerous in the Philippines than in any other group of the Indian Archipelago. They are smaller, more slightly built, and less dark in colour, than the Negroes of Africa, and have features less marked by the Negro characteristics, but have woolly instead of lank hair. The name bestowed on them by the Spaniards is Negritos, or little Negroes, but that of Its or Aheta, so pronounced but written Ajeta, seems to be their usual appellation among the planters and villagers of the plains. They are ebony black, well-formed, and sprightly, but rarely exceed 4i feet in height.
Of the central group of the Philippines, con sisting of Panag, Negros, Samar, Leyte, Masbate, Bohol, and Zebu, the two former are the only islands in which Negrito tribes exist to the present day ; and even as regards Panag, the fact must be considered doubtful. Negros Island, however, contains a considerable Negrito population, the crest of the mountain range, which extends throughout the length of the island, a distance of 120 miles, being almost exclusively occupied by scattered tribes.
Waigiou.—The inhabitants of the islands of Waigiou, lying between New Guinea and Gilolo, one of the Moluccas, are Negroes. M. Du Perry represents them as having more regular features.
Gebbe.—M. Freycinet has described the Negroes of Gebbe, an island also between New Guinea and Gilolo, and not far from the latter. The nose is flat, the lips thick and projecting, the com plexion a dark olive, the eyes deep-seated, and on average the facial angle 77°, but as high as 81°. In Gebbe, Waigiou, and some parts also of the coast of New Guinea, the Malayan race may have become intermixed with the Negro, as the corn plexion is lighter, and the peculiar texture of the Negro hair altered or obliterated.
All the islands extending from New Guinea up to the Fiji group appear to be inhabited by Negroes. But they differ greatly in physical appearance in New Ireland, Malicollo, one of the great Cyclades, Tanna and New Caledonia iu the New Hebrides. A Papuan or Timorese is darker, and with more frizzly hair than the Polynesian, New Zealander, or Otaheitan, but their features are almost identical.