settlement which are undoubtedly to be found in the larger Seychelles Islands; though these had long been uninhabited when rediscovered by the Portuguese and French. It seems, however, almost impossible, that repeated colonizations of Madagascar should have taken place by direct voyages from Sumatra or Java (at a period from 2500 to 1500 years ago) by adventurous Malays starting forth in outrigger canoes for an ocean journey of about 4000 miles. How did they know Madagascar awaited them on the other side of that tremendous interval? It is much more likely that they passed on by degrees from point to point in their western migrations; first to Ceylon, then to the Maldiv Islands (this name, like some other place and tribal names in South India, suggests affinity with “Malay,” “Malagasy”), and so on to the Seychelles, Almirante, Aldabra and the Comoros. But, if so adventurous, why did not these Malagasy Malays also colonize the east coast of Africa? If they ever did so, there remains not the slightest trace of their presence in either the physique or the languages of the present inhabitants. There are, it is true, outrigger canoes in use at Zanzibar which may derive from some occupation of that island by Malagasies on their way to Madagascar; but Zanzibar, though only twenty miles from the mainland, is very distinct from East Africa. Its original inhabitants, when it was first examined by Europeans, belonged to only three types—negroes, Arabs, and Indians. There is evidence, however, of a scattered and varied character, that intercourse for trading purposes between China, India and Persia on the one hand, and South Arabia and Zanzibar on the other is as old as the beginning of the Christian era. Himyaritic-Arab intercourse with the Malagasy of north Madagascar must be at least as old as that; to judge by a variety of indications, it is certainly pre-Islamic.