We should ask what point would give us the existing phænomena with the least amount of migration; and we should ask this upon the simple principle of not multiplying causes unnecessarily. The answer would be--_the centre_. From the centre we can people the parts about the circumference without making any line of migration longer than half a diameter; and without supposing any one out of such numerous lines to be longer than the other. This last is the chief point--the point which more especially fixes us to the centre as a hypothetical birth-place; since, the moment we say that any part of the circumference was reached by a shorter or longer line than any other, we make a specific assertion, requiring specific arguments to support it. These may or may not exist. Until, however, they have been brought forward, we apply the rule _de non apparentibus_, &c., and keep to our conventional and provisional point in the centre--remembering, of course, its provisional and conventional character, and recognising its existence only as long as the search for something more real and definite continues.
In the earth as it is, we can do something of the same kind; taking six extreme points as our starting-places, and investigating the extent to which they _converge_. These six points are the following:--
1. Tierra del Fuego. 2. Tasmania (Van Diemen’s Land). 3. Easter Island--the furthest extremity of Polynesia. 4. The Cape of Good Hope, or the country of the Saabs (Hottentots). 5. Lapland. 6. Ireland.
From these we work through America, Australia, Polynesia, Africa, and Europe, to Asia--some part of which gives us our _conventional, provisional, and hypothetical centre_.
I. _From Tierra del Fuego to the north-eastern parts of Asia._--The Fuegians of the island have so rarely been separated from the Patagonians of the continent that there are no recognised elements of uncertainty in this quarter, distant as it is. Maritime habits connect them with their northern neighbours on the west; and that long labyrinth of archipelagoes which runs up to the southern border of Chili is equally Fuegian and Patagonian. Here we are reminded of the habits of some of the Malay tribes, under a very different sky, and amongst the islets about Sincapore--of the Bajows, or sea-gipsies, boatmen whose home is on the water, and as unfixed as that element; wanderers from one group to another; fishermen rather than traders; not strong-handed enough to be pirates, and not industrious enough to be cultivators. Such skill as the Fuegian shows at all, he shows in his canoe, his paddles, his spears, his bow, his slings, and his domestic architecture. All are rude--the bow-strings are made exclusively of the sinews of animals, his arrows headed with stone. Of wood there is little, and of metal less; and, low as is the latitude, the dress, or undress, is said to make a nearer approach to absolute nakedness than is to be found in many of the inter-tropical countries.