In This Description There Seems Little To Object To On The Score
Of Beauty, And Yet On The Whole The Malays Are Certainly Not
Handsome.
In youth, however, they are often very good-looking,
and many of the boys and girls up to twelve or fifteen years of
age are very pleasing, and some have countenances which are in
their way almost perfect.
I am inclined to think they lose much
of their good looks by bad habits and irregular living. At a very
early age. they chew betel and tobacco almost incessantly; they
suffer much want and exposure in their fishing and other
excursions; their lives are often passed in alternate starvation
and feasting, idleness and excessive labour, - and this naturally
produces premature old age and harshness of features.
In character the Malay is impassive. He exhibits a reserve,
diffidence, and even bashfulness, which is in some degree
attractive, and leads the observer to thinly that the ferocious
and bloodthirsty character imputed to the race must be grossly
exaggerated. He is not demonstrative. His feelings of surprise,
admiration, or fear, are never openly manifested, and are
probably not strongly felt. He is slow and deliberate in speech,
and circuitous in introducing the subject he has come expressly
to discuss. These are the main features of his moral nature, and
exhibit themselves in every action of his life.
Children and women are timid, and scream and run at the
unexpected sight of a European. In the company of men they are
silent, and are generally quiet and obedient.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 393 of 412
Words from 106021 to 106278
of 111511
