Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/536

 438 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. Several other ophidians aro includel in the Madagascar fauna, but according to most naturalists, none of these snakes appear to be poisonous, although this state- ment is doubted by Iloulder* and some other travellers. On the other hand, the natives stand in much dread of two species of spiders, whose bite is even said to be fatal. The world of insects and smaller animals is extremely varied, and like that of the mammals, includes types presenting striking analogies with those of all the other continents, from Africa to Australia and South America. No naturalist has thrown more light on this insular fauna than M. Grandidier, our knowledge of which he has enlarged by the discovery of six- teen mammalians, ten birds, twenty-five reptiles, and eighteen saurians, besides numerous in.sects and other small animals. Inhabitants. No stone weapons or implements have been discovered in Madagascar,t a fact which seems to justify the supposition that the island remained uninhabited till the arrival of already half-civilised settlers. Like the indigenous fauna, the human inhabitants of this region are of diverse origin, and through these various elements it is connected with the vast semicircle of lands which sweep round the Indian Ocean from Africa and Southern Asia to the Malayo-Polynesian archipelagoes. But although immigrants have certainly arrived from the west, north, and east, there can be no doubt that the dominant influence, if not in numbers at all events in their relative higher culture, belongs to the peoples of Malayan or Oceanic origin. A convincing proof of this is afforded by the language which is current amongst all the tribes, of whatever race, from one end of the island to the other. Whether they be of Negro, Arab, Indian, or Malay descent, all the Malagasy jKJoples speak a pliant, poetic, and melodious tongue, which careful philological research has clearly shown to be related to tlie great linguistic family spread over the whole of the Eastern Archipelago and the Polynesian islands. Their very collective name of Malagasy has even been connected by Vinson, De Froberville, and others with that of Malacca, in the Indo-Chinese peninsula. Numerous voca- bularies, the earliest of which were a Dutch collection of 1604 and that of Arthu- ►ius, dating from 1613, had already rendered this relationship more than probable, while more recent systematic grammars and complete dictionaries have placed beyond all doubt the hypothesis of the first scientific explorers. Of a hundred and twenty familiar terms in Malagasy, nearly one hundred are clearly of Malay origin, the rest being derived from Arabic, Swaheli, or some other Bantu dialect. According to Mullens, the most striking resemblances and analogies are found bttwern the dialect of the Betsimisarakas of the east coast and the Malays of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. All those agglutinated geographical names which occur on the map of Madagascar, and which are often of such t Sibcee, The Great African likmd.
 * North-east Madagatear. •