of New Holland annually with from "80 to 100 praus," and that their trepang and tortoise-shell fishing afforded employment for 1000 men.
If this may be taken as having been a custom of long continuance, one might reasonably expect not only that there should be a strong Malay (Bugi?) cross in the tribes inhabiting the coast from Clarence Strait to Raffles Bay, but that there should be found a strong Malay element in the language of these aborigines. But from the quotations which I have given, the relations of the two peoples appear not to have been always friendly, and this may account for the absence of words of Malay origin in this very part of Australia where Mr. Mathew says we might expect to, but do not, find them.[1]
It seems that all that can perhaps be properly said as to the influence of Malays (Bugis) upon the Australian languages is that on the north coast, limited probably to the range of the trepang, words might become naturalised in the languages of coast tribes, and be thence transported inland to such distances as the interchange of women as wives by those tribes might extend.
As I have pointed out, three of the twelve words identified by Mr. Mathew as Malayan are found, on reference to Dr. Codrington's work on the Melanesian languages, to be also Melanesian. Dr. Codrington shows conclusively that the elements which are common to them and the Malay have not been derived from the latter, but are common to all the ocean languages, from the Malagasy in the west to the Hawaiian in the east and the Maori in the south. He says, further, that this indicates an original oceanic stock language, from which the Polynesian, Melanesian, and Malay tongues have derived their common elements, which is now extinct and of which the Malay is one of the younger descendants. The presence of certain common words in the ancient ocean languages testifies that the speakers made canoes, built houses, cultivated gardens, before the time when their posterity branched off on their way to Madagascar and Fiji.[2]
