To Judge Of Their Numbers From The Crowd We Saw At Port Sandwich, I Should Conclude, That They Are Far From Inconsiderable; But Considering The Great Size Of The Island, I Cannot Suppose It To Be Very Populous.

Fifty thousand is, I think, the greatest number we can admit, and these are not confined to the skirts of the hills, as at Otaheite, but dispersed over the whole extent of more than six hundred square miles.

We ought to figure their country to ourselves as one extensive forest: They have only begun to clear and plant a few insulated spots, which are lost in it, like small islands in the vast Pacific Ocean. Perhaps if we could ever penetrate through the darkness which involves the history of this nation, we might find that they have arrived in the South Sea much later than the natives of the Friendly and Society Isles. So much at least is certain, that they appear to be of a race totally distinct from these. Their form, their language, and their manners, strongly and completely mark the difference. The natives on some parts of New Guinea and Papua, seem to correspond in many particulars with what we have observed among the Mallicollese. The black colour and woolly hair in particular are characteristics common to both nations. The slender form of the Mallicolese is a character, as far as I know, peculiar to them and the New Zealanders; but that nation hath nothing in common with them in all other respects.

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