350 The Present Condition of the Indian Archipelago, 



wlio have followed in his steps, too hastily connected the supposed 

 subsidence with the existing oeolooical configuration of the reaion, 

 and neglected the all-important evidence of the comparative distri- 

 bution 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 ad- 

 duced 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 de- 

 luged 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 

 ejectino' 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, tliaTi 

 other archipelagoes are to the particular countries or continental 

 sections with which they are connecteJ. 



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

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

 mation. They were determined by the same forces which originally 

 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 

 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 powerl'uUy 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 ex- 

 cites the admiration of the voyager, and from its never staling, 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 sti-angely intermingled. Great islands are dis- 



