Of the Dutch travellers, the generality allow, that the natives of this island are robust, well proportioned, nervous, and full of muscular vigour; that their visage is flat, their cheek-bones broad and prominent, their eye-lids large, their eyes small, their hair long, and their complexion tawny; that they have little beard; that they wear their hair and their nails very long; and that in order to beautify their teeth, they polish them with files. In a little island fronting that of Java, the women are tawny, their eyes small, their mouths large, their noses flat, and their hair long and black.
From all these accounts we may infer, that the inhabitants of Java greatly resemble the Tartars and Chinese; while those of Malacca, Sumatra, and of the neighbouring little islands differ from them equally in the features of the face, and in the form of the body. This may have very naturally happened; for the peninsula of Malacca, the islands of Sumatra and Java, as well as all the other islands of the Indian Archipelago, must have been peopled by the nations of the neighbouring continents, and even by the Europeans, who have had settlements there for these three hundred years. This must have occasioned a very great variety in the inhabitants both in the features and colour, and in the form of the body and proportion of the limbs. In the island of Java, for example, there is a people called the _Chacrelas_, who are altogether different, not only from the natives of the island, but even from all the other Indians. The Chacrelas are white and fair, and their eyes are so weak that, incapable of supporting the light of the sun, they go about with them lowered and almost closed till night, when their vision becomes more strong.
According to Pyrard, all the inhabitants of the Malacca islands are similar to those of Sumatra and Java in manners, mode of living, habits, language, and colour. According to Maldeslo, the men are rather black than tawny, and the women are more fair. They have all, he says, black hair, large eyes, eye-brows and eye-lids, and bodies vigorous and robust. They are also nimble and active; and though their hair very soon becomes grey, they yet live to a great age. Each island, he further remarks, has its particular language; nor can it be doubted but that they have been peopled by different nations. The inhabitants of Borneo and of Baly, he adds, are rather black than tawny; but according to other travellers, they are only brown like the other Indians. Carreri says, that the inhabitants of Ternate are of the same colour as those of Malacca, which is a little darker than those of Philippine islands; that their countenances are comely; that the men are more shapely than the women, and that both bestow particular care upon their hair.