Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/84

72 to be found between the American languages and the Malayan many analogous terminations and words, and some exactly alike, which in the present question is a fact not to be slighted.

In the Philippines at the arrival of the Spaniards the art of writing was known, and Orientalists may see in the Alphabets of that epoch that there is not in them the slightest trace of the Chinese writing, nor the Sanscrit, Tamul, Telengi, Arabic, or in fine of any Caligraphy of Asia or Africa. On passing through Singapore I saw an ancient stone whose inscription no one had been able to decipher, but it was the same kind of writing as the ancient Philippine, though from its bad state of preservation it was impossible for me to read it. This proves nothing further as to the communication which existed between the two countries, since the language affords of this fact an irrefragable testimony, but it is one for believing that they did not obtain the art of writing from Asia. In the Bugin language of the Celebes also there is an alphabet in which no Asiatic analogy is discoverable.

Notwithstanding this and that in the Oceanic dialects there are not found any Chinese roots, yet the broad cranium of the Malay, the acute, facial angle and the lank hair, have made me often think that the Males who mixed themselves with the Papuans must have been of the Mongol race. In Manilla especially, where I observed together at once, the heads of Chinese, of Papuans, and of Philippians, I could not but incline to the belief that the last proceed from a descent crossed of the two former. It would be easy enough in that Capital to make experiments illustrative of the matter, and it would be a subject worthy the attention of its Economic Society. We know that when the Portuguese first came to Borneo that island was full of Chinese and its ports of Champanes. Further in the Philippines are traces of a very remote communication with the same. The savages of the tribe of Benguet use profusely in their dialect the Cha Che, and those who inhabit the heights of Candon (Tinguianes) discover at first sight by their color, physiognomy, and dress, an indubitable Chinese origin.

Neither can we doubt that people came to the Philippines from other Malay islands. The name Barangai to denote a tribe or settlement testifies it, as Barangai or Barangayan signifies a launch or boat, and this is conformable with the traditions that those who came in a Barangai formed a separate tribe and governed by themselves alone. Historic documents also show that there came Bornese who married with Aheta