languages a xn races. 
217 
nated, as the theory which I adopt supposes them to have been, 
within the bounds of the Archipelago, to which I first confine my 
examination. I have no doubt the dissemination was effected, in 
the case of the languages of neighbouring tribes, by conquest, and 
in the more remote, by piratical expeditions, terminating In con¬ 
quest and colonization ; by commerce, and, perhaps, in some small 
* 
degree, by religious agency. 
The nearest parallels to this, with which the European reader is 
familiar, will be found in the piratical and commercial expeditions, 
conquests, and colonizations of the ancient Greeks, or the piratical 
expeditions, conquests, and settlements, of the Teutonic nations 
known as Danes, Anglo-Saxons, oj Normans. 
Even without the knowledge of the compass, the monsoons af¬ 
ford, to the nations of the Indian Archipelago, extraordinary fa¬ 
cilities for carrying on such expeditions and such commerce, far 
exceeding even those of the Mediterranean ; and the voyages of the 
Malays and Javanese, consequently, far surpass in length, if not in 
difficulty, those of the early Greeks and Phoenicians. 
When European nations first visited the Indian Archipelago, in 
the beginning of the sixteenth century, they found the Malays and 
Javanese conducting the first stage of that commerce in the clove 
and nutmeg, by which these then much valued articles found their 
way, first into the markets of Continental India, and eventually into 
those of Arabia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome—that is, making trading 
voyages which extended from the western bounds of the Archipela¬ 
go. The spices in question were found in the Roman Markets in 
the second century of our era and the great probably, therefore, 
is, that the Javanese and Malay trade alluded to had, when Euro¬ 
peans first observed it, been going on for at least fourteen centuries. 
The conquests and settlements of the Malays, the chief agents, 
have extended from the centre of Sumatra, the parent country of 
this people, over nearly all the coast of that island itself, over the 
whole Malayan Peninsula, and over nearly the whole coastof Bor¬ 
neo ; while small settlements of them may be found as far as Timur, 
in one direction, and Lugon, the chief of the Philippines, in another. 
