Here Then I Had Discovered The Exact Boundary Lice
Between The Malay And Papuan Races, And At A Spot Where No Other
Writer Had Expected It.
I was very much pleased at this
determination, as it gave me a clue to one of the most difficult
problems in Ethnology, and enabled me in many other places to
separate the two races, and to unravel their intermixtures.
On my return from Waigiou in 1860, I stayed some days on the
southern extremity of Gilolo; but, beyond seeing something more
of its structure and general character, obtained very little
additional information. It is only in the northern peninsula that
there are any indígenes, the whole of the rest of the island,
with Batchian and the other islands westward, being exclusively
inhabited by Malay tribes, allied to those of Ternate and Tidore.
This would seem to indicate that the Alfuros were a comparatively
recent immigration, and that they lead come from the north or
east, perhaps from some of the islands of the Pacific. It is
otherwise difficult to understand how so many fertile districts
should possess no true indigenes.
Gilolo, or Halmaheira as it is called by the Malays and Dutch,
seems to have been recently modified by upheaval and subsidence.
In 1673, a mountain is said to stave been upheaved at Gamokonora
on the northern peninsula. All the parts that I have seen have
either been volcanic or coralline, and along the coast there are
fringing coral reefs very dangerous to navigation.
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