140 
VOYAGE OF THE POTOMAC. 
[February, 
the original possessors of the soil on which they are now found. 
Several writers on this subject maintain that all the oriental nations 
have sprung from two grand stocks, viz. : — the Hindoos and the 
Tartars. The people of the interior evidently derive their ori- 
gin from the former, and the Malays as obviously from the latter. 
In Marsden's History of Sumatra, with which island the author 
had every opportunity of being well acquainted, having resided on 
it for several years in the capacity of " Secretary to the President 
and Council of Fort Marlborough," near Bencoolen, a settlement 
of the English East India Company, he says, that the Malays, 
now so called, are, in comparison with the natives of the interior, 
" but as people of yesterday." In the course of his inquiries 
among the natives concerning the aborigines of the island, he was 
informed of two different species of people dispersed in the woods, 
and avoiding all communication with the inhabitants nearer the 
coast. These they called Orang Cooboo and Orang Coogoo. 
The former, he was informed, were quite numerous, especially in 
that part of the country lying between Palembang and Jamhee. 
He adds, that some of these interior natives have been caught, 
and kept as slaves in Laboon, and that a man of that place was 
actually married to a tolerably handsome Cooboo girl, who was 
carried off by a party who discovered their huts. He says they 
have a language quite peculiar to themselves, and that they eat 
promiscuously whatever the woods afford, — as deer, elephant, 
rhinoceros, wild hog, snakes, or monkeys. The Coogoos, he 
says, are by far less numerous ; and that, excepting the use of 
speech, they differ but little from the orang-outang of Borneo, 
their bodies being covered with long hair. Mr. Marsden does not 
vouch for these facts, but gives them as they were communicated 
to him by the Malays, who have more than once caught, domesti- 
cated, and intermarried with them. The immediate fruits of such 
marriages are said to be somewhat of the Esau species ; but this 
peculiarity disappears in the third generation. The natives of 
Java, according to Barrow, have also a tradition, that their an- 
cestors originally sprang from a species of ape, called the wow- 
wow. 
As a general description, the Sumatrans are rather below the 
middle stature, but well-proportioned. Their limbs are light and 
finely shaped, with small wrists and ankles ; their figures, though 
