332 ON SECLUDED TRIBES OF UNCIVILIZED MEN. 



"We may naturally inquire what can be the cause of their deter- 

 mined isolation, wildness, and untameable ferocity. The most 

 reasonable solution of the difficulty is merely a conjecture. We 

 surmise that those who iirst planted the colony must have expe- 

 rienced cruelty, at the hands either of their own or some other race 

 of men. It is possible that the stock may have originally migrated 

 from the Melanesian islands of Oceanica, and gained a footing in 

 the Malayan peninsula, whence they may have been driven under 

 circumstances of cruelty. They attack Malays with as much 

 ferocity as they do Europeans. Another section of the race may 

 have taken refuge in the mountain fastnesses of the peninsula itself, 

 whore it exists at the present day, as formerly mentioned, under the 

 name of Samangs or Semangs. I cannot find that there have been 

 any opportunities of forming further conjectures from the language 

 of these strange people. 



Another secluded tribe to which I shall refer is to be found in the 

 island of Ceylon ; and I must confess that it was in order to correct 

 some current errors and to bring some recent information concern- 

 ing it before the Institute, that I selected the subject of this paper. 

 Ceylon, from the various vicissitudes of its history and from its 

 having been the resort of merchants through a long succession of 

 ages, presents an interesting object of study to the ethnologist. At 

 the present day there are to be found there, especially in the sea- 

 ports, representatives of at least three, and probably of all, of the 

 great human families. The Aryan, or Indo-European is represented 

 by the British, Dutch and Portuguese, or their descendants ; the 

 Semitic by the Moormen, or traders of the island, who are really 

 Arabian in origin ; and the Turanian, which is the family to which 

 those called Malabars belong, who are identical with the Damilos 

 or Tamils, a race that migrated at an early period from southern 

 India to Ceylon. In addition to these there are specimens of other 

 races whose connection with any one of the great families ethnolo- 

 gists cannot as yet trace, such as the Kaffirs and the Chinese. 



The aboriginal inhabitants of Ceylon are supposed to have been 

 of the Malay race. But there are no reliable records on which to 

 base such a supposition. The character of the canoes which are to 

 this day to be seen on the coast has been adduced as a proof of this 

 assertion. These are supplied with that peculiar appendage styled 

 an "outrigger," which appears in all countries where Malayans 



