THE 
: AMERICAN 4 
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JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND ARTS. 
[SECOND SERIES.] * 
Are. XI. —On the Indian Archipelago.* * 
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innumerable islands. That there is a real and not pine a fan- 
eiful connexion between the Archipelago and Asia is demonstra- 
ble, although, when we endeavor to trace its history, we are soon 
lost in the region of speculation. So obvious is this connexion 
that it has been a constant source of excitement to the imagina- 
bes which, in the traditions of the natives and in the hypotheses 
of Europeans, has sought its origin in an earlier graphical 
unity. Certainly, if, in the progress of the clevatory and depress- 
ing movements which the region is probably undergoing — 
now, the land were raised but a little, we should see shallow se 
dried up, the mountain ranges of Sumatra, Borneo, and Tava 
become continental like those of the Peninsula, and great rivers 
flowing not only in the Straits of Malacca, whose current early 
navigators mistook for that of an inland stream, but through the 
wide valley of the China Sea, and by the deep and narrow Strait 
of Sunda into the Indian Ocean. Thus the unity would become 
geographical, which is now only geological. That the great 
* From the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, for Jy, 1847, 
Scorn Series, Vol. VI, No, 17.—Sept., 1848. 2 | 
