THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 271 



the inhabitants were unable to construct anything in 

 the nature of a boat beyond the simplest form, the 

 elementary hollow log. Another strange fact I must 

 notice is, that even where the constructional skill of 

 the natives in a maritime direction reached quite a 

 high pitch, it suddenly stopped, for some unknown 

 reason, and commenced to retrograde. I have myself 

 seen in the roadstead of an island off Fiji, a flotilla of 

 native craft not one of which was like another ; while 

 the range was from the coracle to the canoe capable 

 of holding a dozen men plying their paddles and 

 making the elegant craft fly along over the crests of 

 the sparkling waves. But it was abundantly evident 

 that there was no prospect of improvement, no ideas 

 on the part of the natives of utilizing the new tools 

 brought within their reach for the production of better 

 or more seaworthy craft. There is, however, abundant 

 evidence to prove that in no part of the world was the 

 sea made more use of as a battle-ground than in the 

 Pacific Ocean; and the same remark holds good, to 

 a great extent, in that connecting link between the 

 Indian and Pacific Oceans, the East Indian Archi- 

 pelago as, indeed, might be expected from the 

 character of the inhabitants and the nature of their 

 habitat. There is no doubt whatever that the Malays 

 at some far distant period evinced sufficient nautical 

 skill and enterprise to equip a maritime expedition 

 which sailed as far as Madagascar, and invaded it so 

 successfully that they became the rulers of the country, 

 dominant lords over the aboriginal inhabitants with 

 few exceptions, and those only in the dense fastnesses 

 of the interior forests. This supremacy the Hovas, 

 as the warlike Malay invaders were called, retained 



