412 On the Indian Archipelago. 



parallel of its elevation and of the strike of its sedimentary rocks, 

 from Singapore to Banka, and almost touches Sumatra, the moun- 

 tain ranges of which are, notwithstanding, parallel to it ; — Borneo 

 and Celebes appear to represent the broader or eastern branch of the 

 Indo-Chinese Peninsula, from which they are separated by the area 

 of the China Sea, supposed to be sinking ; — and, finally, nearly the 

 whole Archipelago is surrounded by a great volcanic curve rooted in 

 Asia itself, and the continuity of which demonstrates that the plat- 

 form and the continental projection with which it is geographically 

 connected are really united, at this day, into one geological region 

 by a still vigorous power of plutonic expansiveness, no longer, to 

 appearance, forming hypogene elevations, but expending itself chiefly 

 in the numerous volcanic vents along the borders where it sinks into 

 the depths of the ocean. 



Whether the present platform ever rose above the level of the sea 

 and surrounded the now insular eminences with vast undulating 

 plains of vegetation, instead of a level expanse of water, we shall not 

 here seek to decide, although we think that Raffles and others who 

 have followed in his steps too hastily connected the supposed subsi- 

 dence with the existing geological configuration of the region, and 

 neglected the all-important evidence of the comparative distribution 

 of the living flora and fauna, which seems to prove that the ancient 

 southern continent, if such there was, had subsided before they came 

 into existence. No conclusive reasons have yet been adduced why 

 we should consider the islands of the Archipelago as the summits of 

 a partially submerged, instead of a partially emerged, continent. 

 But whether it was the sinking of the continent that deluged all the 

 southern lowlands of Asia, leaving only the mountain summits visible, 

 or its elevation that was arrested by the exhaustion of the plutonic 

 energy, or the conversion of its upheaving into an ejecting action, on 

 the opening of fractures along the outskirts of the region, before the 

 feebler action there had brought the sea bed into contact with the 

 atmosphere, the result has been to form an expanse of shallow seas 

 and islands elsewhere unequalled in the world, but perhaps not 

 greater in proportion to the wide continental shores, and the vast 

 bulk of dry land in front of which it is spread out, than other archi- 

 pelagos are to the particular countries, or continental sections, with 

 which they are connected. 



The forms and positions of these islands bear an older date than 

 that of any limited subsidence or elevation of the region after its 

 formation. They were determined by the same forces which origi- 

 nally caused the platform itself to swell up above the deep floor of 

 the southern ocean : and it was one prolonged act of the subterranean 

 power to raise the Himalayas into the aerial level of perpetual snow, 

 to spread out the submarine bed on which the rivers were afterwards 

 to pile the hot plains of Bengal, and to mould the surface of the 

 southern region, so that when it rose above, or sunk into the sea 

 to certain levels, the mutual influences of air and sea and land should 

 be so balanced, that while the last drew from the first a perennial 

 ripeness and beauty of summer, it owed to the second a perennial 



