PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 743 
with no uncertain voice.* It is that he examined thirty languages 
from all the then discovered parts of Australia in quest of Malayan 
words without finding one, or the trace of one. They might have 
been expected in the. language of Raffles Bay, not ‘distant from 
_the trepang fisheries of the nee es of Celebes, but were absent 
from this as from all other of the languages. He remarks that, 
although the trepang fishers occasionally see natives of Austr alia, 
they hold no intercourse with them, and from what he knew of 
the opinions and prejudices of the former, he was satisfied that 
they would no more think of a social intercourse with them than 
with the kangaroo or wild dogs of the same country. 
The trepang fishers here spoken of are the Bugis, a Malayan 
people, who form the principal nation of the Island of Celebes, i 
of whom M‘Gillivray says that two yeurs after the foundation 
of the English ; settlement at Raffles Bay they had taken advan- 
tage of the protection of Europeans to carry on the trepang 
fishery i in the bay.{ 
These remarks are confirmed by Captain Stokes,§ who says, in 
speaking of Raffles Bay, that six Malay prows came in, followed 
by others, soliciting permission to erect their establishments for 
curing trepang under the protection of the British flag, now for 
the first time secure from the attacks of the natives, whose 
hostility had until then forced every other man of them to keep 
under arms whilst the rest worked. 
The visits of the Bugis to the north coast of Australia appear 
to have been far more numerous annually than might have been 
suspected. Mr. Earl, writing in 1837|| of these very people, 
says that they visited the northern shore of New Holland 
annually with from 80 to 100 praws, and that their trepang 
and tortoise-shell fishing afforded employment for 1,000 men. 
If this may be taken as having been a custom of long con- 
tinuance, one might reasonably expect not only that there should 
be a strong Malay (Bugi?) cross in the tribes inhabiting the coast 
from Clarence Strait to Raffles Bay, but that there should be 
found a strong Malay element in the language of these RL Sess 
But from the quotations which I have given, the relations of 
the two peoples appear not to have been always friendly, and 
this may account for the absence of words of Malay origin in 
this very part of Australia where Mr. Mathew says we might 
expect to, but do not, find them.4] 
It seems that all that can perhaps be properly said as to the 
influence of Malays (Bugis) upon the Australian languages is 
that on the north coast, limited probably to the range of the 
trepang, words might become naturalised in the languages of 
*x, Dissertation, clxxxii. xX, p.ccvi.  { xxxviul, Vol. I, p. 141. § i, vol. 1, p. 388. 
|| X11, p. 390. {| xxxix, p. 377. 
