424 BATAVIA TO CAPE OF GOOD HOPE cu. xvilr 
least idea, What I call the Javan is the language spoken 
at Samarang, a day’s journey from the seat of the Emperor 
of Java. I have been told that there are several other 
languages upon the island, but I had no opportunity of 
collecting words of any of these, as I met with no one who 
could speak them. 
The Prince’s Islanders call their language Catta Gunung, 
that is, the mountain language, and say that it is spoken upon 
the mountains of Java, from whence their tribe originally 
came, first to New Bay, only a few leagues off, and from 
thence to Prince’s Island, driven there by the quantity of 
tigers. 
The Malay, Javan, and Prince’s Island languages all have 
words in them, either exactly like, or else plainly deriving 
their origin from the same source with others in the language 
of the South Sea Islands. This is particularly visible in 
their numbers, from whence one would at first be inclined 
to suppose that their learning, at least, had been derived 
originally from one and the same source. But how that 
strange problem of the numbers of the black inhabitants of 
Madagascar being vastly similar to those of Otahite could 
have come to pass, surpasses, I confess, my skill to con- 
jecture. The numbers that I give below in the com- 
parative table I had from a negro slave, born at Madagascar, 
who was at Batavia with an English ship, from whence he 
was sent for merely to satisfy my curiosity in the language. 
That there are much fewer words in the Prince’s Island 
language similar to South Sea words, is owing in great 
measure to my not having taken a sufficient quantity of 
words upon the spot to compare with them. 
The Madagascar language has also some words similar 
to Malay words, owron, the nose, in Malay, erwng ; lala, the 
tongue, lida ; tang, the hand, tangan; taan, the ground, 
tanna. 
From this similitude of language between the inhabitants 
of the Eastern Indies and the islands in the South Sea, I 
should have ventured to conjecture much did not Madagascar 
interfere: and how any communication can ever have been 
