Though fond of ease the Annamese are more industrious than the neighbouring peoples. Theatrical and musical entertainments are popular among them. They show much outward respect for superiors and parents, but they are insincere and incapable of deep emotion. They cherish great love of their native soil and native village and cannot remain long from home. A proneness to gambling and opium-smoking, and a tinge of vanity and deceitfulness, are their less estimable traits. On the whole they are mild and easy-going and even apathetic, but the facility with which they learn is remarkable. Like their neighbours the Cambodians and the Chinese, the Annamese have a great respect for the dead, and ancestor worship constitutes the national religion. The learned hold the doctrine of Confucius, and Buddhism, alloyed with much popular superstition, has some influence. Like the Chinese the Annamese bury their dead.
Among the savage tribes of the interior there is scarcely any idea of God and their superstitious practices can scarcely be considered as the expression of a definite religious idea. Roman Catholics number about 420,000. In the midst of the Annamese live Cambodians and immigrant Chinese, the latter associated together according to the districts from which they come and carrying on nearly all the commerce of the country. In the forests and mountains dwell tribes of savages, chiefly of Indonesian origin, classed by the Annamese under the name _Moïs_ or "savages." Some of these tribes show traces of Malay ancestry. Of greater historical interest are the Chams, who are to be found for the most part in southern Annam and in Cambodia, and who, judging from the numerous remains found there, appear to have been the masters of the coast region of Cochin-China and Annam till they succumbed before the pressure of the Khmers of Cambodia and the Annamese. They are taller, more muscular, and more supple than the Annamese. Their language is derived from Malay, and while some of the Chams are Mussulmans, the dominant religion is Brahmanism, and more especially the worship of Siva. Their women have a high reputation for virtue, which, combined with the general bright and honest character of the whole people, differentiates them from the surrounding nations.