526 THE MALAYO-POLYNESIAN RACE. 



CHAPTER XL 



MAN IN THE SAVANNAHS AND THE FORESTS : THE MALAYO-POLYNESIANS 



THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 



THE Malayo-Polynesian race has also been designated, and much 

 more felicitously, the Neptunian or Pelagian, because it peoples 

 exclusively the peninsulas and islands of the great Southern Ocean. 

 It is, to speak the truth, an ill-defined, heterogeneous, and com- 

 posite race, presenting very diverse types. Ethnologists, however, 

 divide it into two original branches the Malayan and the Poly- 

 nesian. 



The Malays have the skull flattened in the inferior portion, the 

 malar bones very wide apart, a flat nose, an exceedingly wide mouth, 

 thick lips, and eyes raised in the direction of the temples ; their 

 yellow skin embrowns by exposure to the sun, but if sheltered from 

 its rays, grows almost white, especially with the females. Generally 

 speaking, they are corrupt, sanguinary, and perfidious, as our seamen 

 wrecked upon their shores have too frequently experienced ; but they 

 are intelligent, and capable of a certain degree of civilization. The 

 best marked types of this race are found in Sumatra, among the 

 anthropophagous Battas already spoken otj the Orang-Lobous, and 

 the Pagais. The latter tatoo the body, says Maury,* and like the 

 Nagas of Assam, make new marks every time they have killed a foe ; 

 thus bearing about on their own persons the evidences and glorifica- 

 tion of their prowess. Like the Michmis of Assam, they expose their 

 dead on rudely-constructed scaffolds or platforms, where they leave 

 them to decay ; a custom which prevails amongst nearly all the Poly- 

 nesian populations, as well as among the Redskins of North America. 

 We must therefore conclude that the Malayan race was, at the outset, 

 extremely barbarous. It owes its civilization to the influence of the 

 * Alfred Maury, " La Terre et 1'Homme," ch. vii. 



