F “a pre from oue island to another were 
ited and and ; 
On the Indian Archipelago. 163 
living rocks of beautiful colors, and shaped like stars, flowers, 
s and other symmetrical forms. Of multitudes of peculiar 
fishes which inhabit the seas, the dugong, or Malayan mermaid, 
most attracts our wonder 
ore we leave this part of our subject, we would assure any 
European reader who may suspect that we have in aught written 
too warmly of the physical beauty of the Archipelago, that the 
same nature which, in the West, only reveals her highest and 
most prodigal terrestrial beauty to the imagination of the poet, 
as here ungirdled herself, and given her wild and glowing 
charms, in all their fullness, to the eye of day. The ideal has 
here passed into _ ary The few botanists who have visited 
this region declar t from the multitude of its noble trees, 
odorous and Sonuiful smite and wonderful vegetable forms of 
all sorts, it 1s inconceivable in its magnificence, luxuriance pi 
variety. The zoologists, in their turn, bear testimony to the 
rare, curious, varied and important animals which inhabit it, and 
the number and character of those already known is such as to 
justify one of the most me of the day in expressing 
his belief, that ‘no region on the face of the earth would furnish 
more novel, splendid, or Sxaicntlinady forms than the unexplored 
islands in the eastern range of the Indian Archipelago.’ 
Hitherto we have faintly traced the permanent influence of 
the physical configuration of the Archipelago in tempering the 
intertropical heat, regulating the monsoons, determining the dis 
tribution of plants and animals, and giving to the whole region 
its peculiar character of softness and exuberant beauty. But 
when its rock foundations were laid, the shadow of its future 
human, as well as natural, history spread over them. Its primal 
physical architecture, in diminishing the extent of dry land, has 
increased the variety in the races who inhabit it ; while the min- 
eralogical constitution of the insulated elevations, the manne 
which they are dispersed throughout its seas, and all the shbcaks 
and botanical consequences, have affected them in innumera- 
ble modes. Again, as we saw that the platform of the Archi- 
pelago is but an extension of the great central mass of Asia, and 
that the direction of the subterranean forces had determined the 
prac of the land, so we find that its population is but an exten- 
of foe “Asiatic oS and that the direction of nie 
g Ls 
al “wandering of small parties or wires fa 
