Recent investigations, likewise, must be considered to have sufficiently proved that the wave of population, which has spread itself over so large a portion of the surface of the globe, has flowed from the same central region, which all history points to as the cradle of our race, and which may be here described generally as the southern tract of the great continent of Asia. This prolific clime, while it has on the one hand sent out its successive detachments of emigrants to occupy the wide plains of Europe, has on the other discharged its overflowing numbers upon the islands of the Pacific, and, with the exception of New Holland* and a few other lands in its immediate vicinity, the population of which seems to be of African origin, has, in this way, gradually spread a race of common parentage over all of them, from those that constitute what has been called the great Indian Archipelago, in the immediate neighbourhood of China, to the Sandwich Islands and Easter Island, in the remotest east of that immense expanse of waters. The Malay language is spoken, although in many different dialects and degrees of corrup tion, throughout the whole of this extensive range, which, measured in one direction, stretches over nearly half the equatorial circumference of the globe, and in another over at least seventy degrees of latitude. The people are all also of the same brown or copper *That is, Australia.