aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

188 AROUND THE WORLD.
nental course during the succeeding centuries was north«
ward, through Mexico, to the great chain of northern lakes.
Ruins, symbols, and the crumbling pottery of the last of the
mound-builders and Mexicans, are almost identical with
ruins, carvings, and old roads in Malay-peopled lands.
The acute ethnological writer, D'Eichtal, declares that
" the Polynesian is an original civilization, and apparently
the earUest in the world ; that it spread to the east and the
west from its focus in Polynesia, or in a continent situated in
the same region^ hut now submerged ; that it reached America
on the one side, and Africa on the other, where it embraced
the Fulahs and Copts." He further suggests " that a germ
from the Polynesian cradle, falling into the valley of the
Nile, originated the ancient Egyptian civilization."
CUSTOMS COMMON TO MALAYS AND LKDLAJTS.
The Rev. Mr. Keasbury, thirty years in the East, and one
of the best Malay scholars in the world, has, in keeping with
another gentleman, a list of words found both in the Malay
and the original dialects of the American continent. But
we have no space to adduce the argument from the similarity
of language. Since starting upon this tour, I have seen
no Pacific Islanders, no people anywhere, that in general
features, color of skin and hair, carriage in walking, method
in sitting, and government by chiefs and sub-chiefs, so
closely resembled our better Indian tribes of the West and
South-west.
Traveling out into the country from Johore, and also up
the Peninsula (starting in at the Wellsley Province, opposite
Penang), where monkeys and the ruder of the Malays
inhabit alike fields and forests, I either observed, or learned
from others, that these degenerate Malays, instead of shaving
the beard, pluck it out, as do the Indians of America.
Walking in streets and forest-paths, the woman strides
along in advance, the man following to ward off beasts of
prey. So with the Indians. In this country, by the way,