the former. Of the two families they are the
shyer, and the more squalid; numbering about two hundred individuals and
forty boats. Their dialect is Malay, spoken with a guttural
pronunciation, and with a clipping of the words.

At the birth of a child they have no ceremonies; at marriage a present
of tobacco and rice to the bride's mother confirms the match; at death
the deceased is wrapped in his garments and interred.

Skin diseases and deformities are common; nevertheless, many of their
women are given in marriage to both the Malays and Chinese; but I know
of no account of the mixed progeny.

A low retreating forehead throws the face of the _Orang Sletar_
forwards, though the jaw is rather perpendicular than projecting.[66]

Such are the _Orang Binua_ originally, or at present, in contact with
the small and isolated possessions of the British in the Malayan
peninsula.

Of the proper Malays I have said next to nothing. Excellent works give
full accounts of them;[67] whilst it is not through _them_ that the true
ethnological problems are to be worked.

I believe that when we reach Borneo, the equivalents to the _Orang
Binua_, or the original populations in opposition to the Mahometan
Malays, become referable to a fresh type, and that instead of being
_darker_ than the true Malays they are often _lighter_. At any rate, one
thing is certain, _viz._, that, whether the skin be brown, blackish, or
fair, the language belongs to the same stock.

Again--although in one area the darker tribes may preponderate, it is
not to the absolute exclusion of the fairer. The Dyaks of Borneo are,
generally speaking, light-complexioned; yet, there is special evidence
to the existence of dark tribes in that island. On the other hand there
is equal evidence to the existence of families lighter-skinned than the
true Malays in the peninsula. Nevertheless, as a general rule, the
departure from the type of that population is towards darkness of colour
on the continent, and towards lightness in Borneo.

With what physical conditions these differences coincide is not always
easy to be discerned. In the South Sea Islands, where in one and the
same Archipelago, we find some tribes tall and fair, whereas others are
dark and ill-featured, it has been remarked by Captain Beechy that this
contrast of complexion coincides with the geological structure of the
soil. The lower and more coralline the island, the blacker the
islanders; the more eleva