160 On the Indian Archipelago. 
would reappear on the one side, new shores would be seen on 
almost every other. But it is the wonderful freshness and green- 
ness in which, go where he will, each new island is enveloped, 
that impresses itself on his senses as the great distinctive charac- 
ter of the region. The equinoctial warmth of the air, tempered 
and moistened by a constant evaporation, and purified by period- 
ical winds, seems to be imbued with penetrating life-giving virtue, 
under the influence of which even the most barren rock becomes 
fertile. Hence those groups of small islands which sometimes 
environ the larger ones like clusters of satellites, or mark where 
their ranges pursue their course beneath the sea, often appear, in 
_ particular states of the atmosphere, when a zone of white quiv- 
ering light surrounds them and obliterates their coasts, to be 
dark umbrageous gardens floating on a wide lake, whose gleam- 
ing surface would be too dazzling were it not traversed by the 
shadows of the clouds, and covered by the breeze with an inces- 
sant play of light and shade. Far different from the ~placid 
beauty of such scenes is the effect of the mountain domes and 
peaks which elsewhere rise against the sky. In these the voy- 
ager sees the grandeur of European mountains repeated, but 
with all that is austere or savage transformed into softness and 
beauty. The snow and glaciers are replaced by a mighty forest, 
which fills every ravine with dark shade, and arrays every peak 
and ridge in glancing light. ven the peculiar beauties which 
the summits of the Alps borrow from the atmosphere are some- 
times displayed. The Swiss, gazing on the lofty and majestic 
form of a volcanic mountain, is astonished to behold, at the rising 
of the sun, the peaks inflamed with the same rose-red glow which 
the snowy summits of Mount Rosa and Mount Blanc reflect at 
its setting, and the smoke wreaths, as they ascend from the cra- 
ter into mid-air, shining in golden hues like the clouds of 
heaven.* 
serene in their beauty and magnificent as these moun- 
tains generally appear, they hide in their bosoms elements of the 
highest terrestrial sublimity and awe, compared with whose 
appalling energy, not only the bursten lakes and the rushing ava- 
lanches of the Alps, but the most devastating explosions of Vesu- 
vius or Etna, cease to terrify the imagination. When we look 
upon the ordinary aspects of these mountains, it is almost im- 
possible to believe the geological story of their origin, and if our 
senses yield to science, they tacitly revenge themselves by placing 
in the remotest past the era of such-convulsions as it relates. But 
the nether powers though imprisoned are not subdued. The 
same tellurie energy which piled the mountain from the ocean 
- Zollinger in describing Mount Semiré in Java, notices this singular resem- 
| to the mountains of his native country. 
