Ansieer to Mr. Crawford's letter. HO. 



party however related that on one occasion being on board 

 an European vessel, he was driven i'rom Java to Diego 

 Garcia in {our days by a violent storm. The Committee 

 therefore begs to touch upon the second part of the question. 

 Leaving out of the case any attempt at determining the 

 mode of transit of the Malays, those Phenicians of the 

 Eastern seas, over so many thousand miles of ocean, even 

 assisted by the Monsoon and the Trade winds, all that can 

 be said at the present moment is, that the distance is not 

 an absolute physical impossibility to the Malay migration, 

 though no positive argument can be brought to bear on 

 its actual performance. Those who are acquainted with 

 the Polynesia, know what immense distances the slight 

 barks of the natives sometimes traverse, and not possessing 

 either the skill or courage of the Malays. If therefore the 

 actual mode of migration cannot be proved, the fact of the 

 great Ovah race being Malayo-Polynesian cannot be 

 doubted, for there are language, customs, manners and the 

 shape of the crania to prove it. One point however must 

 be borne in mind, that the proper Malays have no traits 

 in comtnon with the Negroes; the physical differences ob- 

 servable in the type of the inhabitants of Madagascar, will 

 therefore embrace some other varieties of the species, the 

 infusion of African and Mozambique blood. The corres- 

 pondence of the language spoken on Madagascar with the 

 Malay was noticed by Flaccourt who wrote in 1658; this 

 similarity was at once pronounced by Philologists to be 

 merely a casual effect of commercial intercourse between 

 the traders of the Coast. Adelung and the completers of the 

 great work Mithridates from their imperfect knowledge, 

 wished to prove that this Malayan interfusion was accident- 

 ly originated and that there were several dialects among 



