VII.] THE OCEANIC MONGOLS. 253 



" contrariwise." Of them it is told that once when cooking eggs 

 they boiled them for hours to make them soft, and then finding 

 they got harder and harder threw them away as unfit for food. 

 Others having only one slave, who could not paddle the canoe 

 properly, cut him in two, putting one half at the prow the other at 

 the stern, and were surprised at the result. It was not to be 

 expected that such simpletons should speak Malagasy properly, 

 which nevertheless is spoken with surprising uniformity by all the 

 Malayan and Negro or Negroid peoples alike. 



Of these two races, who have occupied the island from time 

 immemorial, the Malayans probably arrived first, 

 and, the way once found, were afterwards joined Element^ 

 at different times by other seafaring bands from the 

 Eastern Archipelago. The Bantus of the opposite coastlands, not 

 being navigators, could scarcely have themselves crossed the 

 swift-flowing and choppy Mozambique Channel, which is nowhere 

 less than 240 miles wide, and is moreover swept by the great 

 current setting steadily from Madagascar south-westwards to the 

 Cape. Thus the stream that helped the Oceanic Mongols would 

 arrest the African Negroes, who were probably brought over in 

 small bands at intervals by the slavers, at all times active in these 

 waters. 



Arriving in this way not as free settlers, but as domestic slaves, 

 the Negroid Bantus would necessarily become assimilated in 

 speech and usages to their Malayan masters, as they have else- 

 where been assimilated to their Hamitic, Egyptian, Arab, Persian, 

 and Turkish masters. Thus may perhaps best be explained the 

 absolute predominance of the Malagasy language, to the exclusion 

 of all rivals, and the relations now prevailing in Madagascar may 

 be taken as a striking illustration of the fundamental principle 

 that different races may merge in a new type, but their languages 

 will not mix, and in the struggle all perish but one '. 



In Madagascar, however, the fusion of the two races is far less 

 complete than is commonly supposed. Various 



Partial 



shades of transition between the two extremes are Fusion of the 

 no doubt presented by the Sakalavas of the west, 

 and the Betsimisarakas, Sitanakas, and others of 



1 Eth. Ch. ix. 



