370 RE3IARKS AND OPINIONS. 



and smooth ; some families of princes are distin- 

 guished by a fairer complexion. Their resemblance 

 with the Malay race, and, in their language, the 

 identity of many roots with the other dialects, are 

 remarkable. The influence of Mahometanism in 

 their manners is evident. They have always had 

 a commercial intercourse with the Arabs. The 

 Vinzimbers, with almost woolly hair, and skulls 

 artificially moulded, with peculiar manners and 

 languages, seem, though now dispersed and un- 

 settled, to have been the aboriginal inhabitants of 

 the island. 



Shall we derive the Madecasses from India, and 

 the Vinzimbers from Africa? or shall we unite 

 them with the Papuas, to whom they may be 

 compared ? * 



The smaller islands of the Indian Sea were un- 

 inhabited before the Europeans came. 



We recognise the Austral negroes in the ab- 

 origines of Cochin China, the Moys, or Moyes, 

 who, about the beginning of the fifteenth century, 

 were driven by emigrants from Tonquin, of a 

 Tartar race, into the mountains between Cochin 

 China and Cambogia, their present abode t, and in 

 the mountaineers of the Malayan peninsula, who 

 are called Samang Bila, and in the southern part 



* We have made use principally of*' Madagascar, or Robert 

 Drury's Journal," London, 1729 : his Vocabulary, and that of 

 Hieronimus Megisserus, Leipsig, I72S. 



f Chapman, in the Asiatic Journal. 



