Eine Weltreise. Plaudereien aus einer Zweijährigen Erdumsegelung von Dr. Hans Meyer

Abstract

THIS handsome volume is something more than the work of a “globe-trotter,” even of a very amusing “globe-trotter.” Dr. Meyer sailed down the Danube to Constantinople, thence to Athens, Syria (where he visited Smyrna, Beyrout, Damascus, and Jerusalem), Egypt, and by the Red Sea to Bombay. He then travelled through Northern India to Calcutta, and from Madras through Southern India to Ceylon, The journey in the Far East included Singapore, a considerable portion of Java, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Japan. Thence he reached the United States, through a large part of which he travelled, Mexico, Cuba, and so back to Europe, The journey was more extensive than the usual modern journey around the globe; Java appears to have been thoroughly visited, but the only place in which the work displays any mark of originality is in the Philippines. The scenes and experiences by the way are described with much liveliness, but soon after his arrival in Manila he made a journey into the northern mountainous regions of Luzon, for the purpose of studying the Igorrotos and other tribes having their habitat there. The story of the journey, which occupied about three months, is full of interest, and the ethnology of these tribes is discussed in a special appendix. Prof. Blumentritt, the Austrian scholar, who has devoted many years to the study of the archipelago, especially to the vast Spanish literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries relating to it, comes to the following conclusions on its ethnography. The authoctonous population of the Philippines, the Negritos, were driven back by two Malay invasions, and are now to be found only in isolated remnants scattered throughout the islands of the archipelago. By the first invasion the Negritos were forced from the coast into the interior, where they remained undisturbed until the second Malay irruption. This drove the first Malay invaders in their turn from the coast, and the descendants of the new comers still occupy the ports and harbours to this day. The Negritos were either destroyed by wars with the first Malays, or completely absorbed by marriage with them, that now no tribes of them are to be found. The Malays of the first invasion came from Borneo, and are found to-day in the mountain districts of Luzon, under various tribal names, such as the Tingianes, Igorrotos, Guinanes, Apayos, Abacas, Calnigas, Gaddanes, &c.; while the second invaders, now known as Tagals, Pampangos, Visayas, Ilocanes, Cagayanes, &c., inhabit the coast regions, where they were found by the Spaniards in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. Naturally the various tribes were unable to prevent being influenced by each other, as well as from without, and to this we must attribute similarities in many respects, and especially in religion, which mark the Malays of the whole archipelago. Allowance too has to be made for the influence of the Chinese, perhaps also of the Japanese, on the tribes living on the coast long prior to the Spanish invasion. The inhabitants of the coast, the Malays of the second invasion, for the most part profess Christianity now, and are well known, but the pagans of the interior, the Borneo Malays, who, according to Prof. Blumentritt's theory, formed the first invasion, have never been thoroughly investigated, and this circumstance led Dr. Meyer to spend three months among the Igorrotos. The appendix in which he records his observations is very full. It discusses the name and extent of the Igorrotos, their territory, and its climate, their build, mode of dressing the hair, and tattooing (which is far more elaborate than that of even the Japanese grooms, and is probably the most complicated in the world), their dress, ornaments, weapons, villages, huts, agriculture, and cattle-breeding, food, and drink, domestic utensils, art, tools; customs at birth, and marriage, and death; their priests and religion; head-hunting, war customs, festivals, language, modes of reckoning time and numbers, and their myths and sagas. Finally comes Dr. Virchow's account of an Igorroto skull, and a brief vocabulary. It is this portion of the work which renders it one of scientific interest, and prevents it from being a mere amusing account of the modern grand tour. The numerous illustrations which it contains of the tattooing ornaments, utensils, and the like, add greatly to its value. The Igorrotos are among the disappearing peoples of the earth. They leave the impression of having once possessed a higher culture; their manufactures now are far below those of even half a century ago, and Dr. Meyer thinks that, like every primitive race brought into direct contact with European civilisation, nothing can save them from ultimate extinction.

Eine Weltreise. Plaudereien aus einer Zweijährigen Erdumsegelung von Dr. Hans Meyer.

(Leipzig: Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, 1885.)