GEOGRAPHY AND ANTIQUITIES. 339 



ever, soon acquires different ideas. He finds himself sailing for days 

 or even for weeks along the shores of one of these grea^ islands, often 

 so great that the inhabitants believe it to be a boundless continent. 

 He^ finds that voyages among these islands are commonly reckoned by 

 weeks and months, and that the inhabitants of the eastern and west- 

 ern portions of the archipelago are as mutually unknown to each 

 other as are the native races of North and South America. On visit- 

 in^ the coasts of one of the larger islands, he hears of the distinct king- 



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donis which lie along its shores, of the remote north or east or south, 

 of which he can obtain little definite information, and of the wild and 

 inaccessible interior, inhabited by cannibals and demons, the haunt 

 of the charmed deer which bears a precious jewel in its forehead, 

 and of the primaeval men who have not yet lost their tails. The trav- 

 eller, therefore, soon looks upon this region as one altogether apart. 

 He finds it possesses its own races of men and its own aspects of na- 

 ture. It is an island-world, with insular ideas and feelings, customs, 

 and modes of speech; altogether cut off from the great continents into 

 which we are accustomed to divide the globe, and quite incapable of 

 being classed with any of them. Its dimensions, too, are continental. 

 You may travel as many thousand miles across it, in various directions, 

 occupying as many weeks and months as would be necessary to explore 

 any of the so-called quarters of the globe. It contains as much variety 

 in its climate, in its physical phenomena, its animate and inanimate 

 life, and its races of mankind, as some of those regions exhibit. If, 

 therefore, the claim of Australia to be a fifth division of the globe be 

 admitted, I would ask for this great archipelago (at least on the pres- 

 ent occasion) to be considered a sixth. Looking at a map on which 

 the volcanic regions of the archipelago are marked out those which 

 are subject to earthqnakes, which are of volcanic origin, and which 

 abound more or less in extinct as well as active volcanoes we see at 

 a glance that the great islands of Borneo and Celebes form the central 

 mass around which the volcanic islands are distributed, so as rudely to 

 follow their outline and embrace them on every side but one in a vast 

 fiery girdle. Along this great volcanic band (about 5,000 miles in 

 length) at least fifty mountains are continually active, visibly emitting 

 smoke or vapor ; a much larger number are known to have been in 

 eruption during the last three hundred years ; while the number which 

 are so decidedly of volcanic origin that they may at any moment burst 

 forth again, must be reckoned by hundreds. It i&. not now my object 

 to describe the many fearful eruptions that have taken place in this 

 region. In the amount of injury to life and property, and in the mag- 

 nitude of their effects, they have not been surpassed by any upon rec- 

 ord. Forty villages were destroyed by the eruption of Papandayang 

 in Java, where the whole mountain was blown up by repeated explo- 

 sions, and a large lake left in its place. By the great eruption of Tom- 

 boro, in Sumbawa, 12,000 people were destroyed, and the ashes dark- 

 ened the air, and fell thick upon the earth and sea for three hundred 

 miles around. Even quite recently, since I quitted the country, a 

 mountain which has been quiescent for more than two hundred years 

 suddenly burst into activity. The island of Makian, one of the Mo- 

 luccas, was rent open in 16 46 by a violent eruption which left a huge 

 chasm on one side, extending into the heart of the mountain. It was, 





