No. 42— VITI-ISLANDEIt.
[“ Habitant de Havre-Carteret, avec sa peinture de cérémonie :”—D ’U r v il l e , op. cit., Pl. 99, IV, p.
446.]
Colored from Idem, Pl. 100. All these islanders bedaub their faces, and
stain their hair with red and yellow ochres.
VII .
MALAYAN [otherwise “ East-Indian ”] REALM.
(Nos. 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48.)
R a f f l e s , M a r s d e n , C r a w f o r d , L o g a n : — these four names constitute, among the latest,
, our most reliable authorities.
The most advanced ground of their researches has been already covered by M. Maury’s
Chapter I.
Not having yet received Mr. Crawfurd’s last work (1856), I must present the reader with
this gentleman’s views (in History of the Indian Archipelago, Edinburgh, 8vo, 1820; I, pp.
13-28) ; after remarking, that European first acquaintance with the Malay race commenced
simultaneously with that of the American, viz : only at the close of the XVth century.
“ The first of these [facts] refers to an original and innate distinction of the habitants
into two separate races. In the Indian Archipelago there are—an aboriginal fair or brown
complexioned race,—and an aboriginal negro race ; and, the southern promontory of Africa
excepted, it is the only country of the globe which exhibits this singular phenomenon. * * *
“ No country has produced a great or civilized race, but a country which, by its fertility,
is capable of yielding a supply of farinaceous grain of the first quality. * * * Their boats
and canoes are, to the Indian Islanders, what the camel, the liorse, and the ox, are to the
wandering Arab and the Tartar ; and the sea is to them what the steppes and the deserts are
to the latter. * * *
“ The savages of New Guinea, surrounded at this day by the most splendid, beautiful,
and rare objects of animal and vegetable nature, live naked and uncultivated. Civilization
originated in the west, where are situated the countries capable of producing corn. Man
there is most improved ; and his improvement decreases, in a geographical ratio, as we go
eastward, until, at New Guinea, we find the whole inhabitants an undistinguished race of
savages. * * *
“ There are two aboriginal races of human beings inhabiting the Indian Islands, as different
from each other as both are from all the rest of their species. * * * One of these
races may be generally described as a brown-complexioned people, with lank hair ; and the
other as a black, or rather sooty-coloured race, with woolly or frizzled hair. * * * The brown
and the negro races of the Archipelago may be considered to present, in their physical and
moral character, a complete parallel with the White and the Négro races of the western
world. The first have always displayed as eminent a relative superiority over the second,
as the race of white men has done over the negroes of the west. All the indigenous civilization
of the Archipelago has sprung from them ; and the negro race is constantly found in
the savage state. * * * In some of the Spice islands their extirpation is matter of history.
* * * The brown colored tribes agree so remarkably in appearance themselves, that
one general description will suffice for all. * * * The standard of perfection in color is
virgin-gold ; and as the European lover compares the bosom of his mistress to the whiteness
of snow, the East-Insular lover compares that of his to the yellowness of the precious
metal. * * * The complexion is scarcely ever clear, and a blush is hardly at any time
discernible. * * *
• “ The Papua, or woolly-haired race, of the Indian islands is a dwarf African negro. A
full-grown male brought from the mountains of Queda * * * proved to be no more than
4 feet 9 inches high. * * * The skin, instead of being jet black, as in the African, is of a
sooty colour. * * * The East-Insular negro is a distinct variety of the human species, and
evidently a very inferior one. * * * They have in no instance risen above the most abject
condition. Whenever they are encountered by the fairer races, they are hunted down like
the wild animals of the forest, and driven to the mountains or fastnesses, incapable of
resistance. * * *
“ The question of the first origin of both the negro and brown-complexioned races,
appears to me to be one far beyond the compass of human reason. By very superficial
observers, the one has been supposed a colony from Africa, and the other an emigration
from Tartary. Either hypothesis is too absurd to bear the slightest examination. Not to
say that each race is radically distinct from the stock from which it is imagined to have
proceeded; the physical state of the globe, the nature of man, all we know of his history,
must be overturned to render these violent suppositions possible.” «
R E F E R E N C E S AND E X P L A N A T I O N S .
No. 43. — MALAY.
[^Native of Solor:”— G r i f f i t h ’s Cuvier, Animal Kingdom, London, 1827; I, Plate, p. 186.1
See original, with some variation of hue, in P e r o n , Voy. aux Terres Australes,
(1800-4); 2d ed .; corrected b yD e Freycinet, Atlas Hist., PI. V, “ sold at
d’Infant6rie Malaise.”
My brother William, who (with my brother Henry) has transferred his residence
from the vicinity of Memphis on the Nile, to Memphis on the Mississippi,
resided four years in the Indian Archipelago, where his knowledge of Arabic,
familiarity with Mussulmans, and clear ethnological perceptions, enabled him
readily to acquire Malay. He writes me the following on these portraits:
“ Your Malay I consider to be the offspring of a Kling (low-caste man of Madras)
and a Malay woman. The Mintirfi (No. 46) looks more like a Malay. Intercourse
between a Kling and a Malayan woman is not uncommon.”
No. 44. —JAVANESE.
[“ Sin g o -Sek ar—T a n P e r s , Oost-lndische Typen; Holland, folio, 1854; 5 afiering.]
See R af fl es (Hist of Java, London, 4to, 1817, — Plates, frontispiece & I, p.
92 — also, p. 59) for the fact that, inasmuch as high-caste Malayo-Javanese
complexion is “ a virgin-gold color,” this “ Singo-Sekar” must be low-caste.
No. 45. — MARIANNE-ISLANDER.
[“ Claudio-Lajo (Indien de race pure),” a t Guam:—D e F r e y c in e t , Yoy. “ l’Uranie;” Paris, 1825, PI.
61, No. 2.] *
No. 46—HINDOO..
[“ Chaon- Channa, Veldheen van V id zjap o u r—portrait by native artist (tibi supra, Chap. II, figs
93-6), in the P u l s z k y collection, Hutch catalogue, No. 21: — enlarged, like the preceding one,
to match the other heads in this Tableau.]
Compare for characteristic Hindoos the H on. Mis s E den ’s Portraits of the
Princes and People of India, London, fol., 1844. Although uncolored, there are
none so good.
No. 47.—MINTIKi.
[“ Man of the Mintirfi. tribe” (from Gugong Bermun, ■who lately settled a t Rumbifih near
Malacca: — L o g a n , “ Physical characteristics of the Mintirfi. ” — Journal o f the Indian Archipelago,
I, No. V, Nov., 1847; pp. 294-5; and Supplement, Dec. 1847; pp. 328-35, Plate p. 307,
2d fig.]
Colored by descriptions in No. V, pp. 247-8, 251; but no special reference,
strange to say, being made to individual coloration in these critical papers, it is
as well to compare Vol. II, May, 1848, pp. 245-8, &c.; with H amilton Smith,
op. cit. pp. 224-8. As a memento of the changes which some of these islanders