424 BATAVIA TO CAPE OF GOOD HOPE CH. xvm 



least idea. What I call the Javan is the language spoken 

 at Samarang, a day's journey from the seat of the Emperor 

 of Java. I have been told that there are several other 

 languages upon the island, but I had no opportunity of 

 collecting words of any of these, as I met with no one who 

 could speak them. 



The Prince's Islanders call their language Gotta Gunung, 

 that is, the mountain language, and say that it is spoken upon 

 the mountains of Java, from whence their tribe originally 

 came, first to New Bay, only a few leagues off, and from 

 thence to Prince's Island, driven there by the quantity of 

 tigers. 



The Malay, Javan, and Prince's Island languages all have 

 words in them, either exactly like, or else plainly deriving 

 their origin from the same source with others in the language 

 of the South Sea Islands. This is particularly visible in 

 their numbers, from whence one would at first be inclined 

 to suppose that their learning, at least, had been derived 

 originally from one and the same source. But how that 

 strange problem of the numbers of the black inhabitants of 

 Madagascar being vastly similar to those of Otahite could 

 have come to pass, surpasses, I confess, my skill to con- 

 jecture. The numbers that I give below in the com- 

 parative table I had from a negro slave, born at Madagascar, 

 who was at Batavia with an English ship, from whence he 

 was sent for merely to satisfy my curiosity in the language. 



That there are much fewer words in the Prince's Island 

 language similar to South Sea words, is owing in great 

 measure to my not having taken a sufficient quantity of 

 words upon the spot to compare with them. 



The Madagascar language has also some words similar 

 to Malay words, oiiron, the nose, in Malay, erung ; lala, the 

 tongue, lida ; tang, the hand, tangan ; taan, the ground, 

 tanna. 



From this similitude of language between the inhabitants 

 of the Eastern Indies and the islands in the South Sea, I 

 should have ventured to conjecture much did not Madagascar 

 interfere : and how any communication can ever have been 



