THE HUMAN SPECIES. 247 



ungovernable passion are always breaking forth in acts of 

 indiscriminate murder, brought on by an abuse of ardent spirits, 

 opium, and bang (smoking hemp). These* occur so frequently 

 among them, that in most European settlements, where this 

 race is apt to congregate, particular police regulations and pre- 

 :autions are taken to obviate the greatest mischief; and it is 

 not unusual to kill the maniac on the instant, as the only 

 effectual preventive, since instances are recorded, where they 

 have run up the spear that had transfixed them, and thus have 

 sabred the spearman. This frenzy is commonly known by 

 the name of Muck, Moolc, Mengamok, in Sumatra, and Wude 

 in India. To the same insensibility may be ascribed their 

 ferocious, unyielding spirit in battle. They fight to the last 

 gasp, never ask, and scarcely will accept quarter, nor profess 

 thanks for mercy and the cure of their wounds. 



The great affluence of Arab merchants and fanatics has con- 

 verted the more polished Australasian tribes of Malays to Islam ; 

 the others are still Pagans of very different creeds, generally 

 not resting upon any reasonable system ; but Christianity is 

 now spreading rapidly, through the zeal of missionaries, in the 

 Polynesian islands, where, however, the Caucasian stock is 

 more deeply mixed up in the composition of the nations, than 

 in the great islands nearer the Asiatic shore. 



All, however, record, in somewhat similar forms, a great 

 diluvian catastrophe, have the same notions about the Makeri, 

 or Dragon Serpent, a dragon-fish god assailing the moon, the 

 crescent boat during eclipses ; notions alike remembered in 

 Central Africa, Peru, China and Ceylon, as well as in Borneo 

 and Sumatra. They are essentially the same as the Indian 

 legends of Vishnou, the Tahtar Nataghi, can be traced in the 

 Scandinavian and other heathen mythologies of Europe and 

 North America, being all distorted versions of the scriptural 

 record in Genesis. 



The languages of Malay nations, influenced by the various 

 causes before noticed, and even by the contact of antique de- 



