The Malays have the skull flattened in the inferior portion, the malar bones very wide apart, a flat nose, an exceedingly wide mouth, thick lips, and eyes raised in the direction of the temples; their yellow skin embrowns by exposure to the sun, but if sheltered from its rays, grows almost white, especially with the females. Generally speaking, they are corrupt, sanguinary, and perfidious, as our seamen wrecked upon their shores have too frequently experienced; but they are intelligent, and capable of a certain degree of civilization. The best marked types of this race are found in Sumatra, among the anthropophagous Battas already spoken of, the Orang-Lobous, and the Pagais. The latter tatoo the body, says Maury,[184] and like the Nagas of Assam, make new marks every time they have killed a foe; thus bearing about on their own persons the evidences and glorification of their prowess. Like the Michmis of Assam, they expose their dead on rudely-constructed scaffolds or platforms, where they leave them to decay; a custom which prevails amongst nearly all the Polynesian populations, as well as among the Redskins of North America. We must therefore conclude that the Malayan race was, at the outset, extremely barbarous. It owes its civilization to the influence of the Hindus, and especially to that of the inhabitants of the Malabar coast. This civilization, in all its conditions, the Malays appear to have transported to Madagascar, where they have formed, by intermixture with the Negroes of Africa, two new races--the Hovas, who still preserve distinctly visible affinities with the Negroes properly so called, and the Sakalaves, who approximate towards the Kaffirs. [Illustration: MALAYS--MALE AND TWO FEMALES.] These two mixed races comprise in themselves several varieties, but all bear the common denomination of Malagasy or Madecassy.[185] [Illustration: HOVAS OF MADAGASCAR--MEN, WOMAN, AND CHILD.]