led research, continued for eight years, satisfied me that
under these two forms, as types, the whole of the peoples of the Malay
Archipelago and Polynesia could be classified. On drawing the line which
separates these races, it is found to come near to that which divides
the zoological regions, but somewhat eastward of it; a circumstance
which appears to me very significant of the same causes having
influenced the distribution of mankind that have determined the range of
other animal forms.

The reason why exactly the same line does not limit both is sufficiently
intelligible. Man has means of traversing the sea which animals do not
possess; and a superior race has power to press out or assimilate an
inferior one. The maritime enterprise and higher civilization of the
Malay races have enabled them to overrun a portion of the adjacent
region, in which they have entirely supplanted the indigenous
inhabitants if it ever possessed any; and to spread much of their
language, their domestic animals, and their customs far over the
Pacific, into islands where they have but slightly, or not at all,
modified the physical or moral characteristics of the people.

I believe, therefore, that all the peoples of the various islands can be
grouped either with the Malays or the Papuans; and that these two have
no traceable affinity to each other. I believe, further, that all the
races east of the line I have drawn have more affinity for each other
than they have for any of the races west of that line; that, in fact,
the Asiatic races include the Malays, and all have a continental origin,
while the Pacific races, including all to the east of the former
(except perhaps some in the Northern Pacific), are derived, not from
any existing continent, but from lands which now exist or have recently
existed in the Pacific Ocean. These preliminary observations will enable
the reader better to apprehend the importance I attach to the details of
physical form or moral character, which I shall give in describing the
inhabitants of many of the islands.

CHAPTER II. SINGAPORE.

(A SKETCH OF THE TOWN AND ISLAND AS SEEN DURING SEVERAL VISITS FROM 1854
TO 1862.)

FEW places are more interesting to a traveller from Europe than the town
and island of Singapore, furnishing, as it does, examples of a variety
of Eastern races, and of many different religions and modes of life. The
government, the garrison, and the chief merchants are English; but
the