244 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



cf that stream. This stem now extends across the great pen- 

 insula of Indo-China, or has been propelled, by the pressure of 

 genuine Mongolic races and mixed Indo tribes, not only to the 

 extreme south of the peninsula, but driven onwards, beyond 

 sea, to the islands of Australasia, to Madagascar, the archipel- 

 agos of the Pacific; and, it would seem, even to South Amer- 

 ica, before that continent was visited by the great migrations 

 which came down the coast by the west of the Cordilleras. 

 Conquered on the mainland of Asia, tribes of Malays, no doubt, 

 reached the peninsula of Malacca at a remote period, but not 

 before Java and Sumatra, Borneo and Celebes were detached 

 from it ; for notwithstanding that the deep channels, extant in 

 their present waters, soundings and shoals, spreading even to 

 the vicinity of Australia and New Guinea,* indicate the com- 

 paratively recent period when a great disruption of the land 

 occurred in those latitudes, or the present conditions of the 

 coasts were completed, still the presence of a more ancient or 

 a more purely typical race, on the centre and on the west coast 

 of the two first-mentioned islands, seems to prove that these were 

 anterior, and the Malays only the second, or more probably the 

 third source of the present population. 



Preceding the arrival of the Malays, there was already 

 extant, as the scattered fragments of the former population 

 prove, the Oriental Negro stock ; both on the continent and in 

 the islands ; and coeval with the first-mentioned tribes, the 

 black Hindoo mixed Caucasian stem seems likewise to have 

 been urged to the same coasts. Thus, the adulteration of the 

 woolly-haired stock was effected in two directions, and the Malay 

 stem, apparently resulting from the union of Caucasian with 

 Mongolic tribes, caused that great variety of feature, complexion, 

 and form, which it is known to possess, without therefore oblit- 

 erating the perceptible sub-typical general resemblance which 

 constitutes the characteristic marks of the whole race. If the 

 Malays were a real typical stock, they would likewise possess 



* Earl's Report in Journal of Geographical Sciences. 



