On the Indian Archipelago. 413 



freshness and fecundity of spring. Hence it is, that in the Archi- 

 pelago, while the bank of black mud daily overflowed by the tides is 

 hidden beneath a dense forest, and the polypifer has scarcely reared 

 its tower to the sea's surface before it is converted into a green islet, 

 the granitic rocks of the highest plutonic summits, and the smoke 

 of the volcanic peaks, rise from amidst equally luxuriant, and more 

 varied, vegetation. Certainly, the most powerfully impressive of all 

 the characteristics of the Archipelago is its botanical exuberance, 

 which has exercised the greatest influence on the history and habits 

 of its human inhabitants, and which, as the most obvious, first excites 

 the admiration of the voyager, and from its never growing stale, be- 

 cause ever renewing itself in fresh and changeful beauty, retains its 

 hold upon our feelings to the last. 



When we enter the seas of the Archipelago we are in a new 

 world. Land and ocean are strangely intermingled. Great islands 

 are disjoined by narrow straits, which, in the case of those of Sunda, 

 lead at once into the smooth waters and green level shores of the 

 interior from the rugged and turbulent outer coast, which would 

 otherwise have opposed to us an unbroken wall more than two 

 thousand miles in length. We pass from one mediterranean sea 

 to another, now through groups of islets so small that we encounter 

 many in an hour, and presently along the coasts of those so large 

 that we might be months in circumnavigating them. Even in cross- 

 ing the widest of the Eastern seas, when the last green speck has 

 sunk beneath the horizon, the mariner knows that a circle drawn 

 with a radius of two days' sail would touch more land than water, 

 and even that, if the eye were raised to a sufficient height, while the 

 islands he had left would reappear on the one side, new shores would 

 be seen on almost every other. But it is the wonderful freshness 

 and greenness in which, go where he will, each new island is enve- 

 loped, that impresses itself on his senses as the great distinctive 

 character of the region. The equinoctial warmth of the air, tem- 

 pered and moistened by a constant evaporation, and purified by peri- 

 odical winds, seems to be imbued with penetrating life-giving virtue, 

 under the influence of which even the most barren rock becomes fer- 

 tile. Hence those groups of small islands which sometimes environ 

 the larger ones like clusters of satellites, or mark where their ranges 

 pursue their course beneath the sea, often appear, in particular states 

 of the atmosphere, when a zone of white quivering light surrounds 

 them and obliterates their coasts, to be dark umbrageous gardens 

 floating on a wide lake, whose gleaming surface would be too dazzling 

 were it not traversed by the shadows of the clouds, and covered by 

 the breeze with an incessant play of light and shade. Far different 

 from the placid beauty of such scenes is the effect of the mountain 

 domes and peaks which elsewhere rise against the sky. In these 

 the voyager sees the grandeur of European mountains repeated, but 

 with all that is austere or savage transformed into softness and beauty. 

 The snow and glaciers are replaced by a mighty forest, which fills 

 every ravine with dark shade, and arrays every peak and ridge in 

 glancing light. Even the peculiar beauties which the summits of 



