HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
133 
projecting lips, curly or frizzly hair, a frank and honest 
bearing, or a grave or timid expression of countenance; some 
of the tribes exhibiting a full bust, resembling the Africans 
on the Mozambique shore. 
The fairer race, including the Hovas, and many indivi¬ 
duals among the Betsileo, the Betsimisaraka, and Betani- 
mena, but especially the Hovas, are distingushed by a light 
olive or copper skin, smaller stature, long hair, dark hazel 
or black eyes, erect figure, courteous and prepossessing 
address, active movements, with an open and vivacious 
aspect. 
All the tribes have naturally fine and regular teeth, 
beautifully white, which is to be ascribed to their practice 
of washing them regularly, and cleaning or bleaching 
them by the use of a dye, or pigment, made from the 
laingio,* a native plant. The former race probably emi¬ 
grated, at some remote period, from the adjacent coast of 
Africa. The latter have evidently one origin in common 
with that singular and astonishing race whose source is yet 
involved in mysterious uncertainty, but 
“ Whose path was on the mountain wave ; 
Whose home was on the sea:” 
whose spirit of adventurous enterprise led them, at a 
period when navigation was almost unknown in Europe, to 
visit the borders of Africa and of Asia, and whose descend¬ 
ants now people the shores of the straits of Malacca, the 
Malayan archipelago, and the chief clusters of the Poly¬ 
nesian islands. 
We have no better means of ascertaining the period at 
which the distinct tribes now inhabiting Madagascar arrived 
on its shores, than we have of tracing the several races to. 
the sources of their origin. The dark-coloured natives 
* Sophonicus lingum. 
