nao as Manamouas. The
Aetas live side by side with the Tagals, who are of Malay origin. They
were called Negritos del Monte by the Spaniards who first colonised these
islands. Their average stature, according to Wallace, ranges from four
feet six inches to four feet eight inches. In New Guinea, the Karons, a
similar race, occupy a chain of mountains parallel to the north coast of
the great north-western peninsula. At Port Moresby, in the same island,
the Koiari appear to represent the most south-easterly group; but my
friend Professor Haddon, who has investigated this district, tells me that
he finds traces of a former existence of Negritos at Torres Straits and in
North Queensland, as shown by the shape of the skulls of the inhabitants
of these regions.

The Malay Peninsula contains in Perak hill tribes called "savages" by the
Sakays. These tribes have not been seen by Europeans, but are stated to be
pigmy in stature, troglodytic, and still in the Stone Age. Farther south
are the Semangs of Kedah, with an average stature of four feet ten inches,
and the Jakuns of Singapore, rising to five feet. The Annamites admit that
they are not autochthonous, a distinction which they confer upon the Mois,
of whom little is known, but whose existence and pigmy Negrito
characteristics are considered by De Quatrefages as established.

China no longer, so far as we know, contains any representatives of this
type, but Professor Lacouperie[A] has recently shown that they formerly
existed in that part of Asia. According to the annals of the Bamboo Books,
"In the twenty-ninth year of the Emperor Yao, in spring, the chief of the
Tsiao-Yao, or dark pigmies, came to court and offered as tribute feathers
from the Mot." The Professor continues, "As shown by this entry, we begin
with the semi-historic times as recorded in the 'Annals of the Bamboo
Books,' and the date about 2048 B.C. The so-called feathers were simply
some sort of marine plant or seaweed with which the immigrant Chinese,
still an inland people, were yet unacquainted. The Mot water or river,
says the Shan-hai-king, or canonical book of hills and seas, was situated
in the south-east of the Tai-shan in Shan-tung. This gives a clue to the
localisation of the pigmies, and this localisation agrees with the
positive knowledge we possess of the small area which the Chinese dominion
covered at this time. Thus the Negritos were part of the native population
of China when, in the twenty-th