7. New Caledonia--A short Vocabulary in Cook. A longer one in
Dentrecasteaux and La Billardiere.
All these languages, although mutually unintelligible, exhibit words
common to one another, common to themselves and the New Guinea,
and common to themselves and the Malay. See Transactions of the
Philological Society, vol. i. no.[26] 4.
[Footnote 26: This is the preceding paper. (1859).]
IV. The Blacks of Australia are generally separated by strong lines
of demarcation from the Blacks of New Guinea, and from the Malays.
Even on the philological side of the question, Marsden has written as
follows--"We have rarely met with any negrito language in which many
corrupt Polynesian words might not be detected. In those of New Holland
or Australia, such a mixture is not found. Among them no foreign terms
that connect them with the languages even of other _papua_ or negrito
countries can be discovered; with regard to the physical qualities of
the natives it is nearly superfluous to state, that they are negritos
of the more decided class."--_p._ 71.
In respect to this statement, I am not aware that any recent
philologist has gone over the _data_ as we _now_ have them, with
sufficient care to enable him either to verify or to refute it.
Nevertheless, the isolation of the Australian languages is a current
doctrine.
I believe this doctrine to be incorrect; and I am sure that, in many
cases, it is founded on incorrect principles.
Grammatical differences are valued too high; glossarial affinities too
low. The relative value of the grammatical and glossarial tests is not
constant. It is different for different languages.
In 1844, I stated, at York, that from three true Malay localities, and
in three true Malay vocabularies, I had found Australian and Tasmanian
and Papuan words, viz:--
1. In the Timboran dialect of the Sumbawan.
2. In the Mangerei dialect of Flores.
3. In the Ombayan of Ombay.