CHAPTER II 



THE INDIAN OCEAN IN THE THIRTEENTH 

 CENTURY 



AUTHORITIES : 



BEAZLEY'S Dawn of Modern Geography. 

 SPENCER'S Native Tribes of North Australia. 

 WALLACE'S Malay Archipelago. 

 MACMILLAN BROWN'S The Dutch East. 

 MOOKERJI'S Indian Shipping. 

 HUNTER'S History of British India. 



BUT before we follow the story of European discovery 



in the South, it is well that we gather what knowledge 



we may of the Indian Ocean at the time this story began. 



The lone While scholars, Greek, Roman, and Christian, had been 



island spinning arguments about the contents of the Southern 

 continent. r 



temperate region "to us unknown," how were things 

 going in the island continent, and in the Ocean which 

 washed its shores ? 



What seems to be certain, in the midst of so much 



The uncertainty, is that the Australian natives who, in the 



practice of dateless backward of History, had passed along the islands 



Black from India, 'lived for untold centuries in their final home 



ustraia. - n a i mos ^ complete isolation. 1 Their civilization was 



a very poor thing, but it was their own. Throughout 



1 See an interesting essay by Professor Griffith Taylor on The Evolu- 

 tion and Distribution of Race, Culture, and Language in the Geographical 

 Review, Jan. 1921. " Nothing is so dangerous to a people as complete 

 isolation. The natural barrier, which preserved the Australian 

 aboriginals from invasion, also resulted in their remaining in the same 

 low state of civilisation for 100,000 years." The guess is that they got 

 to Australia by an almost continuous bridge, which was knocked to 

 pieces about 100,000 years ago ! 



