416 On the Indian Archipelago. 



may, according to our locality, encounter herds of elephants, the 

 rhinoceros, tigers of several sorts, the tapir, the babirusa, the orang- 

 utan, the sloth ; and, of the winged tribes, the gorgeously beautiful 

 birds of paradise, the loris, the peacock, and the argus pheasant. The 

 mangrove rivers and creeks are haunted by huge alligators. An 

 endless variety of fragile and richly coloured shells not only lie empty 

 on the sandy beaches, but are tenanted by pagurian crabs, which, 

 in clusters, batten on every morsel of fat seaweed that has been left 

 by the retiring waves. The coasts are fringed w r ith living rocks of 

 beautiful colours, and shaped like stars, flowers, bushes and other 

 symmetrical forms. Of multitudes of peculiar fishes which inhabit 

 the seas, the dugong, or Malayan mermaid, most attracts our 

 wonder. 



Before we leave this part of our subject, we would assure any 

 European reader who may suspect that we have in aught written too 

 warmly of the physical beauty of the Archipelago, that the same 

 Nature which, in the West, only reveals her highest and most prodi- 

 gal terrestrial beauty to the imagination of the poet, has here un- 

 girdled herself, and given her wild and glowing charms, in all their 

 fullness, to the eye of day. The ideal has here passed into the real. 

 The few botanists who have visited this region declare, that from 

 the multitude of its noble trees, odorous and beautiful flowers, and 

 wonderful vegetable forms of all sorts, it is inconceivable in its mag- 

 nificence, luxuriance and variety. The zoologists, in their turn, 

 bear testimony to the rare, curious, varied and important animals 

 which inhabit it, and the number and character of those already 

 known is such as to justify one of the most distinguished of the day 

 in expressing his belief, that " no region on the face of the earth 

 would furnish more novel, splendid, or extraordinary forms than the 

 unexplored islands in the eastern range of the Indian Archipelago." 



Hitherto we have faintly traced the permanent influence of the 

 physical configuration of the Archipelago in tempering the intertro- 

 pical heat, regulating the monsoons, determining the distribution of 

 plants and animals, and giving to the whole region its peculiar cha- 

 racter of softness and exuberant beauty. But when its rock foun- 

 dations were laid, the shadow of its future human, as well as natural, 

 history spread over them. Its primal physical architecture, in di- 

 minishing the extent of dry land, has increased the variety in the 

 races who inhabit it ; while the mineralogical constitution of the in- 

 sulated elevations, the manner in which they are dispersed throughout 

 its seas, and all the meteoric and botanical consequences, have af- 

 fected them in innumerable modes. Again, as we saw that the plat- 

 form of the Archipelago is but an extension of the great central mass 

 of Asia, and that the direction of the subterranean forces had deter- 

 mined the ranges of the land, so we find that its population is but 

 an extension of the Asiatic families, and that the direction of migra- 

 tion was marked out by the same forces. But, separated by the sea 

 from the great plains and valleys of the continent, having the grand 

 routes of communication covered by mountains and dense and diffi- 

 cultly penetrable forests, the Archipelago could not be peopled by 



