The Franco-Annamese Conflict [pp. 202-217]

-204 TirE FRANCO-ANKAMEsE CONFLICT. [N~v.,
as s~rely the inhabitants of cold, uncomfortable ranges of lofty
mountains to the warm and fertile plain. In fact, it was from the
mountainous centre of Asia, sometimes called the roof of the
world, that, along with the Yenisei and Lena rivers in the
north&rn countries, the Amour, Hoang-Ho, and Yang-Tse~Kiang
in the eastern ones, and the Cambodia, Ganges, and Indus in the
southern regions, torrents of mountaineers flowed down to the
yarious sea-shores.
But the first settlers of a newly-opened valley never belong
to the superior grades of mankind. Not until much later on do
more civilized and intelligent populations appear, taking their
place above the first inhabitants, and generally either destroying
them or driving them away to the poorer parts of the country,
or perhaps producing a mixed race by intermarriages, the results of which, long after these invasions, are easily recognized
by the keen eye of the ethnological observer.
The first inhabitants of the Indo-Chinese peninsula were negroes, not identical with those of Africa, but looking very rnuch
like the Papuan, with their woolly hair, thick lips, and narrow,
retreating foreheads. They are still to be found, in their more or
less~pure type, under the names of Moys and Kemoys, in the Indo-Chinese forests, and in Malacca under the appellation of Sammangs. Other negroes, with stiff hair and round, narrow heads,
came next and lorded it over the aborigines, establishing regular
kingdoms, among them that of Tsiampa, at present replaced by
the empire of Ann am. Their blood is still more or less traceable in the very much mixed populaLion of Indo-China, and some
Specimens of their pure type are to be seen in the mountains
where they, under the name of Chams, or Tsiams, were, like the
other negroes, driven back. To these two kinds of negroes we
must add the Piaks, Charais, and Penongs, who are very similarto the Malays, either because they were originally from the
Malay peninsula, or, as it is thought by Dr. Harmand, because
they are continental Malays who had never left the continent
for the peninsula.
To that preliminary blending of the black and tawny colors
is to be added, at a far later period, the infiltration of the yellow
race carried away from the Chinese province of Yun-Nan by the
rivers Mekong and Song.Koi, or Red River. From the amaJga~
mation of these oblique~eyed, broad, flat-faced Mongolians and
the continental Malays came the present Annamites, with chocolate-colored skin and oblique eyes, who chew betel like Malays,
and possess in common with them a characteristic widening of