Iviii Appendix. 



etlinological considerations ; these, therefore, should be touched on here aS' 

 slightly as possible. I will consequently only trouble you in this direction by 

 stating that one author suggests the populating of Madagascar by storm-driven 

 Malay proas; but physical geography is entirely against this theory. Another 

 suggests the sinking of the earth's surface, so that what was once dry land is now 

 the deep ocean ; but the teachings of geology forbid this within the period 

 required, for the deltas of the Ganges, Indus, Euphrates, and Zambesi prove 

 that practical quiescence has reigned for these last 100,000 years, while much 

 under that period is abundance for the displacement or movement of races 

 that we have to enquire into. 



In primitive races slave-hunting is the first necessity, for by it they obtain 

 ministers to their ease and lust ; mercantile adventure follows. Archaic 

 Hindustan, as one of the most prolifi.c nurseries of the human race, would 

 soon have recourse to these great causes of migration and conquest. Lesser 

 ranges than that shown in Plate III. existed in full force up to within very 

 recent times, and yet in a curtailed manner exisfc, viz., in the Indian 

 Archipelago, whose basis is in Mindanao, and on the east coast of Africa, 

 whose basis is in Yemen. That the Malagasi migration had taken place from 

 archaic India before the age of letters, their want of literature proves ; for 

 we may accept it as an axiom that letters once attained to by a race are never 

 lost. Thus two or more small tribes in Sumatra have letters peculiar to them- 

 selves, and the small island of Bali, near Java, has preserved for ages not 

 only a Hindu literature, but a dead language — this against the assaiilts of 

 Mahommedan zeal and Christian power. 



Then, if the migration from South Hindustan to Madagascar took place 

 before the age of letters, we have an indication of its antiquity by the cuneiform 

 letters and hieroglyphics of Assyria and Egypt, whose crude attempts at 

 recording words or deeds date not beyond 3,400 years. At that time South 

 India, or Hindustan, would be extending her expeditions east and west, she 

 being the great centre of trade, and, having the necessities, would also at the 

 same time acquire letters of her own, or borrow them from those close 

 neighbours. That her trade expanded, we may judge by the date of the 

 foundation of Tyre by those great East Indian merchants, the Phoenicians, 

 3,120 years ago ; and that the powerful and wealthy partook of or used their 

 merchandize we may judge of by the Song of Solomon, which, 2,900 years ago, 

 celebrated the camphire of Sumatra and the cinnamon of Ceylon, whose chief 

 marts were South India. * Thus the fossil words of Barata were planted westward 



* Vasco da Gama, the first direct European trader to India, at the end of the 

 fifteenth century found the stores of Cannanor, Calicut, and Cochin filled with pepper, 

 ginger, nutmegs, cloves, etc. , the produce of South India, as well as of Sumatra, Java, 

 the Moluccas, etc. He also found a Hindoo trader on the coast of Africa, as far south as 



