[298] The ethnographic movement is a very definite fact in anthropological evidence, though it has been little noted. Thus "the Coles are evidently a good pioneering race, fond of new clearings and the luxuriant and easily raised crops of the virgin soil, and have constitutions that thrive on malaria, so it is perhaps in the best interest of humanity and cause of civilisation that they be kept moving by continued Aryan propulsion. Ever armed with bow, arrows, and pole-axe, they are prepared to do battle with the beasts of the forest, holding even the king of the forest, the 'Bun Rajah,' that is, the tiger, in little fear."--Col. Dalton in _Journ. Asiatic Soc., Bengal_, xxxiv. 9. [299] Traditions of great migrations exist among most primitive races. Some of these contain unexpected corroboration from actual discoveries. Thus the natives of New Zealand had a tradition that their ancestors, when they arrived in their canoes some four centuries ago, buried some sacred things under a large tree. It is said that the tree was blown down in recent times and that the sacred things were discovered. Taplin records "a good specimen of the kind of migration which has taken place among the aborigines all over the continent" (_The Narrinyeri_, p. 4); and similar evidence could be produced in almost every direction. Mr. Mathew in _Eaglehawk and Crow_ deals with "the argument from mythology and tradition" as to the origin of the Australians in a very suggestive fashion (pp. 14-22). Stanley has preserved an African native tradition of local groups spreading out from the parent home _(Through the Dark Continent_, i. 346). [300] I am aware this is disputed by O. Peschel--_Races of Man_, 137 _et seq._--but I think the evidence is sufficient; and it must be remembered that there is direct evidence of the most backward races not using the fire they possess for cooking, but always eating their animal food raw, as, for instance, the Semang people of the Malay Peninsula. (See Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, i. 112.) The Andaman Islanders could not make fire, though they possessed and kept it alive. This shows that they must have borrowed it and did not previously possess it.--Quatrefages, _The Pygmies_, 108. Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_, cap. ix., should be consulted. [301] The term political is, I confess, a little awkward, owing to its specially modern use, but it is the only term which, in its early sense, expresses the stage of social development represented by a polity as distinct from a mere localisation.