﻿36 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



constant flow of population has proceeded, so much so tliat over a large area 

 once solely populated by the Negro, as proved in the preceding part of this 

 paper, the - people have now pure, or neai^ly pure Mongolian features. A 

 Chinese in a Malay di-ess cannot be distinguished from a Malay, the featui-es and 

 stature being so similar. From the Indian Archipelago the blood of the Negro 

 has almost entirely disappeared, yet the roots, phonology, and ideology of his 

 language remain an indelible j^roof of his former sole occupation of the region. 

 How this has occurred modern experience also provides a plausible theory, if 

 not a complete solution. 



Slavery is inherent in tropical customs and manners, and is but slightly 

 interrupted by the exertions towards its suppi'ession by European powers — thus 

 slave hunting is as great an institution to-day as it was in the times of 

 Nimrod, the more skilled thus prey on the weakei^, and the Negro is not 

 alone the victim to the vice, as the European would say, or to the social 

 necessity, as the Asiatic woiild express himself. Thiis, during my day, and 

 under my own experience, I have listened to the relations of the personal 

 encounters of the Keddans with the Negros of the Andaman Islands, to 

 which parts the former tribe proceeded annually in search of edible birds' 

 nests. Here frequent skirmishes took place with varying results, the victors 

 bearing off the vanquished as slaves. This constant system of bloodshed or 

 capture little affected the increase of the more numerous Mongolian race (the 

 Keddans), but gradually thinned out the ranks of the Negro. Siich has been 

 the case from time immemorial, but under this slow process of extinction, 

 how has the Negro language been preserved and perpetuated by his con- 

 querors 1 It is accounted for in this way. 



The traditional and invariable policy of Eastern Asiatics has been to 

 prevent the emigration of women. Thus, even in modern times, though 

 thousands of Chinese annually migrate to the Indian Archipelago, no women 

 accompany them ; so those of the emigrants that settle to agricultural or 

 trading pursuits (and this a large portion do) take wives of the indigenous 

 inhabitants, and whose children remain in their own countries even though 

 the fathers return to theii original homes. These children acquire the 

 language of their fathers but partially, but of their mothers completely, and 

 the grandchildren lose knowledge of the former entirely. Thus, the tropical 

 language remains intact, while the race is siiffused with new blood and 

 impressed by foreign physiognomy. 



Again, where slavery and polygamy prevail universally, a large portion 

 of the lower orders, by these institutions, remain unproductive, and the 

 superior orders, in this case Chinese, in a great measvire increase the race. 

 Thus has the aboriginal Negro gradually, and by slow process in the course of 

 many centuries, been extirpated from that portion of the Indian Archipelago 



