86 TRTBES INHABITING PENANG AND PKOYINCE WELLESLEY. 



half of the Peninsula, from Johor to Peralr, none being found in 

 Kedah. 



The variations in the physical characters are considerable, but 

 these are more closely allied to the Malayan than to the finer 

 Indonesian. In a common form of the head, it is somewhat prog- 

 nathous, the zycomata have much lateral development, the fore- 

 head is very narrow, and the eye also is more oblique than in the 

 Malay. In some respects this type resembles that of the Kol and 

 some of the cognate Gangetic and Ultra-Indian tribes, more than 

 that of the Malays. But examples are also found of approaches 

 to the finer Indonesian forms. The person is shorter than with the 

 Malays. The trunk is very long in proportion to the limbs, which 

 are lighter and handsomer than with the Malays. The dialects are 

 Malay, but all the vocabularies that have been collected preserve 

 a variable proportion of non-Malay words. Many of these are 

 Mon-Anam, and the Perak tribes and several of the Southern 

 Binuas still use the Kol and Simang first pronoun. The remaining 

 non-Malay vocables are mostly Sumatran, but some have remoter 

 Indonesian affinities. The civilization of the Binua is of the ruder 

 Ultra-Indian and Malay kind. Where they have least intercourse 

 with the Malays, the dress of the men is still a strip of bark passed 

 between the legs and fastened at the waist, and that of the women 

 a piece of bark beaten out and wrapped round them from the 

 waist to the knees. Where there is regular traffic with the Malays, 

 the dress of the latter has been adopted by the males, but the 

 cloth sarong of the females retains the scanty dimensions of the 

 original bark petticoat. The huts are ruder than those of the 

 Malays. Their agriculture is confined to the migratory system 

 that prevails among all the ruder Himalaic tribes, and much of 

 their food is derived from fishing, snaring and hunting, no sorts of 

 flesh being rejected. 



The Binua appear to have spread over the Peninsula in p re- 

 Malayan ages, extirpating the Simang in the narrower Southern 

 portion. During the Mon-Kambojan era, that people would occupy 

 towards them the same relation that the Malays now occupy. The 

 language of the Mons and Kambojans would become the lingua 

 franca of the districts around their Colonies and of the rivers on 

 both sides of the Peninsula which their praus frequented for barter 



