228 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



after the arrival of European navigators, that bodies of 

 colonists, from the celestial empire, made their appearance 

 in Luon and Java. Even in Formosa the population was 

 alien, until refugee emigrants, escaping from Mantchou 

 conquest, reached the island in the seventeenth century, 

 when the Dutch were already in possession of it. 



But notwithstanding this historical fact, Caucasians 

 from Eastern China, Indo- Arabs from Western Asia, 

 and unnamed tribes from the Malay peninsula, seamen 

 from choice or necessity, had long before laid the basis 

 of the resident populations, being in a more or less state 

 of degradation by Oriental Negro interunions. They 

 formed the numerous pirate communities, Orang Laut, 

 Sea Gipsies, Jacalvas in Madagascar, Idaan, Marootzie, 

 Sea Dyaks in Celebes, Biagoos or Bragus in Borneo, 

 some partially sedentary, others entirely dwellers on 

 the seas, shifting their stations with the monsoon, so as 

 to be always under the lee of land ; and, among other 

 superstitions, like western Hindoos, sending a model 

 canoe, cursed and loaded with the sins of the people, 

 far away on the ocean. Their legends and romances, 

 most particularly in Sumatra and Java, are of Hindoo 

 origin ; and vast temples of Indian divinities, such as 

 that of Boro-Budor in Java, point to a Brahminical 

 religious system prevailing there before the Arabian 

 innovations of Islam came among them. From families 

 of these tribes, rather than from pure Malays, the ma- 

 jority of the Polynesian islanders are composed ; their 

 chiefs still bearing the marks of higher Caucasian castes 

 than the vulgar, who were, from the first, servants and 



