134 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
appear to have been the earliest settlers in the island, 
and may therefore be considered as the aborigines of the 
country, as tradition respecting the settlement of the fairer 
race invariably represents them as having, at the time of 
their arrival, found the country inhabited. Their languages 
do not assist the inquiry, for they have been so intimately 
blended, as to present, in those spoken by the distinct races 
respectively, fewer peculiarities than are in other points 
observable among those by whom they are used. 
We have already seen that the physical peculiarities of 
the several tribes now constituting the population of Mada¬ 
gascar, are considerably diversified; and serviceable as an 
acquaintance with their distinctions might be, in aiding 
our inquiries into the origin of the nations now peopling 
our globe, and the means and the course by which many 
tribes of the human family reached the countries which 
they now inhabit, these points are, when the mental and 
moral qualities of the people are regarded, compara¬ 
tively unimportant. We contemplate their intellectual 
habits and powers, and their peculiarities of mind, with 
greater satisfaction, and derive from these, when viewed 
in connexion with their physical constitution, new evi¬ 
dence, not only of the fact that God has made of 
one blood all the nations that dwell on the face of the 
earth, but that He has endowed them with faculties of a 
corresponding order; and that while the same variety is 
observable in this as in other portions of the Creator’s 
workmanship, all the essential elements of our intellectual 
nature belong equally to the several portions of mankind; 
and that the elevation, strength, and vigour these attain in 
some, and the imbecility and prostration to which they have 
sunk in others, are to be ascribed to the culture bestowed 
and the direction given to the one, and the neglect, indo- 
