Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/142

 lU VOCABULARIES. ei from the work of Sir Stamford Raffles, and iti correctness may be trusted. The specimen of the Jangua<^es of he South Sea islands is that of the Atui, taken from the third volume of Cook's voy- ages. It is, like all o.hers from the same and similar sources, scan y and unsatisfictory. The selection of words in the original is extremely injudicious, and many txampl s bear internal evidence of error and i :norance. The specimen of the lan- guage of Timur, the most prevalent of the many dialects of the island, and of that of Rotti, were collected by Lieutenant Owen Phillips, a gen- tleman well versed in the Malayan language, and their chief defect is their brevity. The specimen of the language of the Samang, or woolly-haired race of the mountains of the Malayan peninsula, was collected for me by the minister of the prince of Queda, a man of very superior mind, and cor- rected by my friend Major Macinnes, after Mr Marsden, among Europeans, perhaps the best Ma- layan scholar existing. The examples of the Ma- dagascar are from the well-known narrative of Ro- bert Drury, who lived fifteen years among the na- tives. It carries with it internal evidence of au- thenticity, and the errors into which the writer has fallen are those only incident to an untutored and unlettered mind, errors in orthography and of un^ skilfulness in selection. 12