GENERAL FEATURES OF MALAYSIA 
19 
3. The Malay Race and Language. 
Of the two chief peoples of the Eastern Archipelago— 
the Malays and the Papuans—the Malays are decidedly 
the more highly developed, the more numerous and im¬ 
portant. They have spread their language, their domestic 
animals, and some of their customs, widely throughout the 
Pacific and Indian Oceans, in many instances to islands 
where they have effected no sort of change in the 
physical or moral characteristics of the indigenous in¬ 
habitants. This wide diffusion of Malay influence is an 
extraordinary phenomenon, for the Malay race itself has 
by no means such an extensive range, although it has 
been by some supposed that all the brown tribes with 
straight or nearly straight hair, generally termed Poly¬ 
nesians, which are widely scattered in the tropical and 
sub-tropical South Sea Islands, belong to this division of 
mankind. Since Wilhelm von Humboldt’s studies of the 
old Kawi language of Java, we know that the dominant 
race in Madagascar and the Comoro group also belongs 
to the Malay linguistic family. Hence has originated 
the common statement that this race has spread from 
the Comoros to Easter Island, and occupies the area 
between 45° E. long, and 110° W. long., or more than 
half the circumference of the globe. 
But this view as to the extent of the Malayan peoples 
is held by many modern writers to be quite erroneous, 
and they accordingly give the Malays a much more 
restricted habitation. Mr. A. E. Wallace has always 
maintained that the brown Polynesians are really quite 
distinct from the Malays, and, except in colour (though 
in this point he is at variance with most authorities), 
