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On the Indian Archipelago. 159 
expanse of shallow seas and islands elsewhere unequalled in the 
world, but perhaps not greater in proportion to the wide conti- 
nental shores, and the vast bulk of dry land in front of which it 
is spread out, than other archipelagos are to the particular coun- 
tries, or continental sections, with which they are connect 
The forms and positions of these islands bear an older ‘date 
than that of any limited subsidence or elevation of the region 
after its formation. 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 aérial 
level of perpetual snow, to spread out the submarine bed on 2 
which the rivers were afterwards to pile the hot plains of — 
and to mould the surface of the southern region, so that w 
it rose above, or sunk into the sea to certain levels, the ibe 
influences of air and sea and land sliould 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 fe- 
cundity of spring. Hence it is, that in the Archipelago, 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 are 
the granitic rocks of the highest plutonic summits and the sm sm 
of voleanic oe rise from amidst equally luxuri hed 
more varied, vegeta Certainly, the most powerfully: im- 
edire of all the clitracieiaes of the Achipelago is its botani- 
cal exuberance, which has exercised the greatest influence on the 
world. Land and ocean are ensigely eocninal ne! 
islands are disjoined by narrow straits, which, in the case of 
those of Sunda, lead at once into the smooth waters and green 
level shores of the interior from the rugged and turbulent outer 
coast, which would otherwise have opposed to us an unbroken 
wall more than two thousand miles in length. We pass from one 
mediterranean sea to another, now through groups of islets so 
small that we encounter many in an hour, and presently along 
the coasts of those so large that we might be months in oe 
navigating them. Even in crossing the widest of the Haste 
seas, when the last green speck has sunk beneath the Sotacns, 
the mariner knows that a circle drawn with a radius of two days’ 
sail would touch more land than water, and even that, if the eye 
were raised to a suflicient height, while the eames he lg 
