THE MALAY FAMILY. 57 



enterprising spirit, but in their temper are ferocious and vindictive. Caprice and 

 treachery are among their characteristic vices ; and their habitual piracies on the 

 vessels of all nations, are often conducted under the mask of peace and friendship. 



The Malays are said, by the annals of their nation, not to be natives of 

 Malacca, as their name imports, and as strangers have generally supposed, but to 

 have originated in the district of Menangkabao, in the island of Sumatra. They 

 date their first migrations from the parent hive in the year 1160, first fixing 

 themselves in the peninsula of Malacca, where they built the city of Singapore ; 

 and it vs^as from this colony, and not from the parent stock, that the Malayan name 

 and nation were so widely disseminated over the Archipelago.* The Malays 

 are now proverbially scattered throughout the Indian islands, and have especially 

 established themselves in Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Amboyna, Formosa, Celebes, the 

 Philippines, the Moluccas, and parts of Ceylon and Madagascar. 



The Malay inhabitants of Sumatra correspond, in their exterior, to the 

 characters already given of this race, excepting that their complexion is yellower, 

 and they are said to flatten the heads and noses of their children.f In the interior 

 of the island live the Battas, a people of still fairer complexion, but the most 

 habitual and remorseless cannibals on the face of the earth. According to Sir 

 Stamford Raflles "they have a regular government and deliberative assemblies; they 

 possess a peculiar language and written character, can generally write, and have a 

 talent for eloquence: they acknowledge a God, are fair and honorable in their 

 dealings, crimes amongst them are few, and their country is highly cultivated ; 

 and yet these people, so far advanced in civilisation, are cannibals upon principle 

 and system.'' Nay more, they not only eat their victims, but eat them alive; in 

 other words they do not previously put them to death ; and these victims are 

 their own people, and not unfrequently their own relations. Such is the penalty 

 for adultery, midnight robbery, for intermarrying in the same tribe, and for 

 treacherous attacks on a house, village or person. Prisoners taken in war are 

 eaten at once ; and the slain are devoured in like manner.J 



The inhabitants of Java are of a yellowish complexion, and remarkably well 

 formed. Their wrists and ankles are very small, although they are otherwise of 

 a robust make, and resemble the Chinese, between whom and the other Malays 

 they are a connecting link. The Javanese are more tractable and less sanguinary 



* Crawford, Indian Archipel. IT, p. 376. t M arsden's Sumatra, p. 38. 



} Life and Public Services of Sir S. Raffles, p. 425. Quoted in the Library of Entertaining 

 Knowledge, article New Zealanders, p. 107. 

 15 



