141. Ansiver to Mr. Crawford's letter. 



the Madecasses. In the third volume of the work (which 

 Mr. Crawford says he has) § 328 Kaici Sprache first pub- 

 lished in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Berlin by 

 the greatest philosophical linguist of modern times, the 

 illustrious W. Von Humboldt, its author has demonstrated 

 that the language of Madagascar is a filiation of the wide 

 spread Malay o— Polynesian and that the mass of the people 

 also must be considered as of Malay descent, though he will 

 not take upon himself to say from what part of the Great 

 Ocean they have precisely migrated. Though the Mada- 

 gascar language has in it many peculiarities of idiom and 

 words not found in the real Malay, yet the Polynesian dia- 

 lects, such as the Zagala of the Philippine Islands will form 

 the connecting link. The account of the manners and cus- 

 toms also of the Islands Timor, Rotti, Java, Solar, etc., 

 published m the Malayan Miscellanies Bencoulen 1820 * are 

 exceedingly similar to those of Madagascar. Now similar- 

 ity ofcustoms is as great, if not a greater proof of descent 

 than language itself; and in the vocabularies of these Is- 

 lands there are many words which correspond in sound and 

 meaning with those of Madagascar. In Sulo, the Mecca of 

 the East, the remark holds good, both as to Religion, man- 

 ners and customs, and in some degree as to language also. 

 Those who will consult Mr. Hunt's papers on Sulo and the 

 same Gentleman's Sketch of Borneo addressed in 1812 to Sir 

 Stamford Raffles, the historian of Java (Malay Misc.) and then 

 compare them with the customs of Madagascar ** cannot 

 fail to acknowledge the uniformity in the nationality of both. 



* As this work is now extremely scarce, the Committee thought it 

 better to insert its extracts in an Appendix. 



" Elleis's History, for instance, or the earlier work of Mr. de Fro- 

 berville, the sketch of Captain Lewis being extremely meagre. 



