THE HUMAN SPECIES. 221 



The great affluence of Arab merchants and fanatics 

 has converted the more polished Australasian tribes of 

 Malays to Islam ; the others are still Pagans of very 

 different creeds, generally not resting upon any reason- 

 ed system ; but Christianity is now spreading rapidly 

 through the zeal of missionaries, in the Polynesian 

 islands, where, however, the Caucasian stock is more 

 deeply mixed up in the composition of the nations, than 

 in the great islands nearer the Asiatic shore. 



All, however, record, in somewhat similar forms, 

 a great diluvian catastrophe, have the same notions 

 about the Makeri or Dragon Serpent, a dragon fish 

 god, assailing the moon, the crescent boat during 

 eclipses ; notions alike remembered in Central Africa, 

 Peru, China, and Ceylon, as well as in Borneo and 

 Sumatra. They are essentially the same as the Indian 

 legends of Yishnou, the Tahtar Nataghi, can be traced 

 in the Scandinavian and other heathen mythologies of 

 Europe and North America, being all distorted ver- 

 sions of the Scriptural record in Genesis. 



The languages of Malay nations, influenced by the 

 various causes before noticed, and even by the contact 

 of antique detached tribes, whose original affinity can- 

 not now be traced, have produced great differences of 

 opinion among ethnologists, as regards their classifica- 

 tion ; the learned William von Humboldt vainly claim- 

 ing a unity of origin from the identity of the dialects 

 spoken by a great proportion of the Polynesians, whom 

 he and others regard as Malays. But, although we do 

 not mean to deny a pervading intermixture of Malay 



