260 BIMANA. 



These mixtures have tended to efface the peculiar characters of the ori- 

 ginal inhabitants, which must, therefore, be now sought for in the islands 

 protected by their situation from such visits. The islands of the Indian 

 Sea, he remarks, contain two* races of men, differing, in many respects, 

 from each other. In one of these, the blackness, or nearly the blackness, 

 of the Negro, is a marked character ; the hair is curled and woolly, the 

 body slender, the stature short, the disposition barbarous and cruel. 

 The other resembles more closely the Indians of the Continent ; has a 

 fairer skin, larger limbs and stature, better proportions than the former, 

 and exhibits some marks of humanity and civilization. Forster supposes 

 that the black race, whom he considers to be the aborigines, have retired 

 to the middle and mountainous parts of many islands, leaving the coasts 

 and plains to the more recent colonists. These colonists are the Malays, 

 a race widely distributed, occupying, not only the Malayan Peninsula, and, 

 though not exclusively, the islands of the Indian Archipelago, but which 

 has penetrated into Madagascar, where it constitutes the Hova portion of 

 the population, and spread itself throughout the islands of the Pacific, 

 from New Zealand, the Society, the Friendly Isles, and the Marquesas, 

 to the distant Sandwich and Easter Isles. Cuvier, as before stated, is 

 inclined to refer the Malays to the Hindoo and Mongole families :f and 

 Fischer, though, like M. Bory, he sets down the Malay race as constituting 

 a distinct stock, observes " this race is very closely related to the 

 Indian variety of the Japetic species, from which, perhaps, it is not 

 radically distinct."J That the Malay ra*ce, to whatever cause we are 

 to attribute its occupation of the portions of the globe over which it 

 has spread, is of Asiatic origin, not unmixed, perhaps, with Sanscritic 

 offsets, there is every reason to conjecture. Whatever may have 

 been its starting-point, it is certainly, as M. Bory describes it, es- 

 sentially shore-dwelling (" riveraine "), peopling only islands, or such 

 portions of the Continent as border the ocean, and never penetrating 

 into the interior, or passing the mountains, which, running parallel with 

 the coast, divide the maritime districts from the inner and more fertile 

 regions. It is in maritime occupations that the energies of the Malay 

 people are most conspicuous ; and it is to this maritime predilection 

 that their extensive diffusion is to be attributed. Nevertheless, it 

 would appear that their occupation, both of the Malay Peninsula and 



* If the Alfourou and Papuan be distinct, three races. 



t The Malays, termed Hindo-Chinese by some, are regarded, by certain writers, as distinct alike 

 from the Hindoo and the Chinese ; and, though intermingled with offsets from them and other San- 

 scritic nations, to exhibit traces of a distinct origin. See Dr. Lang, On the Migrations of the Poly- 

 nesian Nation. 



% " The people termed Malays, have been hitherto grouped together under the head of a distinct 

 race; namely, the 'Malay race,' although they scarcely differ at all from the Hindoos, of which 

 people they only form a variety, presenting four types the Malays Proper, the Javanese, the 

 Macassars, or Budjis, and the Amboinians, or Timorians." 



