is farther south, and in a less elevated tract of
country, within the territory of the Malay Prince
of Perak, have a wider range of country,—are
more numerous, improved, and powerful. They
make a prey of the larger game, and have skill
enough to encounter and destroy the elephant itself.
These people acknowledge the authority of
a chief, and have, in their way, a regular form of
social polity.
The next step in the progress of improvement
is the formation of permanent residences. This
would be brought about in the peculiar circumstances
of the Indian islands, by the acquisition of
competent subsistence, either from an improvement
in agriculture,—from the discovery of a favourable
fishing-ground, with improved skill in fishing,—or
from both. In this manner the village would be
formed. For protection from the aggression of
neighbouring hordes, and from the attacks of wild
animals, the institution of villages is the necessary
resource, and must have been coeval, in these, and
similar climates, with the first attempt to quit the
erratic course of life. In that early period of society,
a village and a nation were synonymous
terms. *
The village or nation thus formed would neces*
“ In the centre of Anahuac, as well as in the Peloponnesus,
Latium, and wherever the civilization of the human species
sarily require a form of polity for the maintenance
of internal order, for attack, and for defence;
and for this purpose would elect an elder for their
government,—officers to assist him,—and, perhaps,
a priest or astrologer to make their peace with Heaven.
This is precisely the form of the village associations
which, even at present, exist in Java,
and the circumstances which have tended to perpetuate
them there, while they have disappeared
elsewhere, will be afterwards pointed out.
The extension of the nation, or the formation
of new villages, may be readily imagined. When
the population began to press against the means
of subsistence in the first association, by the exhaustion
of the good lands in the vicinity of
the village, or by the incompetency of the supply
of fish, it is needless to say, that, in such a
state of society, the village could not be extended
to the formation of a town. Emigrations would
be the necessary recourse of the society, and a
swarm would be thrown off to form a new settlement,
as near to the parent one as circumstances
would permit, in order that the infant settlement
might receive its support and assistance. In several
parts of Java, where the population is rapidly
increasing, such a process is at present going forwas
merely commencing, every city, for a long time, constituted
a separate state.”— Humboldt's New Spain, Book III.