418 On the Indian Archipelago. 



when he first entered the Archipelago ; and even on his manners, 

 usages and habits, influenced as they have been, his distinctive ori- 

 ginal character is still very obviously impressed. 



We cannot do more than allude to the growth of population and 

 civilization in those localities which, from their extent of fertile soil 

 or favourable commercial position, rose into eminence, and became 

 the seats of powerful nations. But it must be borne in mind, that, 

 although these localities were varied and wide-spread, they occupied 

 but a small portion of the entire surface of the Archipelago, and that 

 the remainder continued to be thinly inhabited by uncivilized tribes, 

 communities, or wandering families. 



Prevented, until a very recent date, by stubborn prejudices and 

 an overweening sense of superiority from understanding and influ- 

 encing the people of the Archipelago, the European dominations 

 have not directly affected them at all ; and the indirect operation of 

 the new power, and mercantile and political policies which thej r 

 introduced, has been productive of much evil and very little good. 

 While, on the one hand, the native industry and trade have been 

 stimulated by increased demand and by the freedom enjoyed in the 

 English ports, they have, on the other hand, been subjected by the 

 Portuguese, English and Dutch to a series of despotic restraints, ex- 

 tending over a period of three hundred years ; and, within the range 

 of the last nation's influence, continued, however modified, to this 

 hour : which far more than counterbalance all the advantages that 

 can be placed in the opposite scale. 



The effect of the successive immigrations, revolutions and admix- 

 tures which we have indicated or alluded to, has been, that there are 

 now in the Archipelago an extraordinary number of races, differing 

 in colour, habits, civilization and language, and living under forms of 

 government and laws, or customs, exhibiting the greatest variety. 

 The same cause which isolated the aborigines into numerous distinct 

 tribes and kept them separate, — the exuberant vegetation of the 

 islands, — has resisted the influence, so far as it was originally amal- 

 gamating, of every successive foreign civilization that has dominated ; 

 and the aboriginal nomades of the jungle and the sea, in their un- 

 changed habits and mode of life, reveal to their European contem- 

 porary the condition of their race at a time when his own fore- 

 fathers were as rude and far more savage. The more civilized races, 

 after attaining a certain measure of advancement, have been sepa- 

 rated by their acquired habits from the unaltered races, and have too 

 often turned their superiority into the means of oppressing, and 

 thereby more completely imprisoning in the barbarism of the jungles, 

 such of them as lived in their proximity. So great is the diversity 

 of tribes, that if a dry catalogue of names suited the purpose of this 

 sketch, we could not afford space to enumerate them. But, viewing 

 human life in the Archipelago as a general contemplation, we may 

 recall a few of the broader peculiarities which would be most likely 

 to dwell on the memory after leaving the region. 



In the hearts of the forests we meet man scantily covered with the 

 bark of a tree, and living on wild fruits, which he seeks with the 



