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.