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Hindu, Malay, and Mongolian tribes across
India, Siam, and the islands of the Archipelago,
till they found ample and undisturbed homes
on this Continent. Since the Pacific has been
extensively navigated by Europeans, companies of
Savage men have repeatedly been met with far
from any land upon [rafters?]. The defeated party in
some of their frequent [contentions?] has been driven
to this venturesome way of escape from the fury
of their conquerors. It is not, therefore difficult to
imagine how drifting or paddling from island
to island the first human inhabitants of Papua
and Australia found their way from the mainland
of Asia to the present abodes of their descendants.
As the whole human family was, up to the time of their
miraculous dispersion possessed of the ordinary arts
of civilization and of the knowledge of there being
one true God, there must have been on the part of
those who are now found destitute of all these,
an abandonment of advantages they much enjoyed.