The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 51, 1801-1840: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 51, 1801-1840: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
[46] The negro of the east appears to have amalgamated with some other
family. On the south coasts of Australasia, they resemble in many
points the people just described. This continues to be the case as far
as Cape Capricorn. To the northward of this, as far as Murray's Islands
in Torres Straits, they are a stout, tall, athletic race of men, [46-A]
and as hairy on the face and body as Europeans, with long hair, and
without the negro cast of countenance. This race may be traced by
intervals to Ternate, Gilolo, &c., where they are called Harraforas;
[46-B] but none are found in the Phillippines (unless the Ylocos have
some relationship to them). Is not the native of New Ireland and Queen
Charlotte's Islands too of this race? [46-C] The difference between
them is most striking. The one are dwarfish negroes, the others almost
black Europeans. Both are essentially different from the Malay family,
and not only so, but from each other (the native of Amboyna, I think,
forms the link between them) and this difference is apparently
anatomical, in the shape of the skull, facial angles, &c.
We are as yet in the infancy of our knowledge of the origin of these
various families of the human race: like that of languages, it will
in all probability remain one more of conjecture than of fact; but it
is still a subject of deep interest. I have heard from respectable
authority, that the language of Cagayan, the most northern province
but one of the island of Luzon, the men of which are tail, stout,
olive-coloured, almost beardless, and proverbial for their mildness,
peaceable behaviour, and fidelity, so much resembles that of the
Sandwich islanders, that some of these at Manila found no difficulty
in making the Cagayan servants understand them! The province of Ylocos
is the next to this to the north, and forms the north coast of the
island. The Ylocos are black, short-bearded men, and noted for their
insubordination and dissipated character.
[46-A] The writer of this memoir has, on the coast of New Holland,
between Cape Capricorn and Endeavour Straits, had occasion to know this
fact. A party of these savages attacked the captain and supercargo of
a vessel in which he was an officer, and they were repulsed only by
firearms. The account of them given by the supercargo, and indeed by
all the party attacked, uniformly agreed in describing them as the
finest made and strongest looking men possible. Their bodies were
also very hairy.
[46-B] The term "Haraforas" is applied to the Subanos of Mindanao by
Captain Forrest; from his Voyage, pp. 266, 268, 271, 273, 278-282, we
obtain the following interesting and first-hand information about
that people:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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