They have the reputation of being a courteous people, as punctilious as the Malays themselves; and they are so amongst each other. But their attitude towards strangers is the embodiment of aggressive self-righteousness, a complacent feeling of superiority which nothing can disturb. Even the upper classes, with all their efforts to be at least polite, often betray the feeling in a subdued arrogance which is not always to be distinguished from vulgar insolence. "After the courteous, kindly Japanese, the Chinese seem indifferent, rough, and disagreeable, except the well-to-do merchants in the shops, who are bland, complacent, and courteous. Their rude stare, and the way they hustle you in the streets and shout their 'pidjun' English at you is not attractive[490]." But the stare, the hustling and the shouting may not be due to incivility. No doubt the Chinaman regards the foreigner as a "devil" but he has reason, and he never ceases to be astonished at foreign manners and customs "extremely ferocious and almost entirely uncivilised[491]." FOOTNOTES: [375] _Ethnology_, p. 300. [376] _Geogr. Journ._, May, 1898, p. 491. This statement must of course be taken as having reference only to the historical Malays and their comparatively late migrations. [377] For the desiccation of Asia see P. Kropotkin, _Geogr. Journ._ XXIII. 1904; E. Huntington, _The Pulse of Asia_, 1907. [378] See J. Cockburn's paper "On Palaeolithic Implements," etc., in _Journ. Anthr. Inst._ 1887, p. 57 sq. [379] "Le type. primitif des Mongols est pour nous dolichocephale" (_Les Aryens au Nord et au Sud de l'Hindou-Kouch_, 1896, p. 50). [380] Thus Risley's Tibetan measurements were all of subjects from Sikkim and Nepal (_Tribes and Castes of Bengal_, Calcutta, 1896, _passim_). In the East, however, Desgodins and other French missionaries have had better opportunities of studying true Tibetans amongst the Si-fan ("Western Strangers"), as the frontier populations are called by the Chinese. [381] _Op. cit._ p. 319. [382] _Op. cit._ p. 327. Here we are reminded that, though the Sacae are called "Scythians" by Herodotus and other ancient writers, under this vague expression were comprised a multitude of heterogeneous peoples, amongst whom were types corresponding to all the main varieties of Mongolian, western Asiatic, and eastern European peoples. "Aujourd'hui l'ancien type sace, adouci parmi les melanges, reparait et constitue le type si caracteristique, si complexe et si different de ses voisins que nous appelons le type balti" (p. 328).