Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/89

Rh teresting account of his having "picked up at sea a tempest driven canoe in about the 20th degree of South latitude, which has been driven 600 miles out of her course and which when rescued was found to have on board 28 men 15 women and 10 children, in fact the nucleus of a little colony." Such cases may be presumed to have been of frequent occurrence and may account for the various islands having become populated without the aid of nautical instruments. De Mas himself further shows how that some such little colony having come in a Barangai or Launch, had probably been the origin of that word having been also given to a tribe, and thus that the same course of events had been in long operation. We can therefore well be prepared for the fact he tells us of the same language intrinsically, being found in many different islands with other evidences of advanced civilization such as the knowledge of letters. On this point it is interesting for us to learn that the well known ancient Inscription found at Singapore could be identified with the Philippine characters. Mr. Crawfurd in the valuable paper he read before this Society on the various Alphabets of the Indian Archipelago, Vol. II. p. 253, also refers to this Stone at Singapore as bearing a very rude but long inscription in what he calls an unknown character, but which he supposed to be the ancient Malay of Sumatra. Now however it is thus shown to be of the Philippian, and according to the statement of our author may to be explained accordingly in the modern Malay of the country. This fact is of itself alone very important as connecting Singapore with the Philippines, but it becomes still more so from another circumstance mentioned by Mr. Crawfurd p. 79 of his Dissertation, that there is another stone inscription in Borneo of the same characters as that at Singapore, which again he terms unknown, but which may thus also be translated by the Philippine. As far as our knowledge of its history extends, the Malays have always been in possession of Singapore, even before their conversion to Mohamedanism, and they are said to have come there from Sumatra. But whether this tradition be true or not, as it will not be inconsistent with our argument and may even support it, we may take it for granted as connecting them with the great extension of language and family conprehended under the name of Malayan.

From these statements of our author we find 1. That the original inhabitants of the Philippines found there by the Spaniards, comprising the brown population and the black or negrito, all speak what is in effect one language, divided