4 
On the Indian Archipelago. 165 
which Indians and Arabs have exerted on his race, he remains, 
physically and morally, in all the broader and deeper traits of na- 
ture, what he was when he first entered the Archipelago; and 
even on his manners, usages and habits, influenced as they have 
been, his distinctive original character is still very obviously im- 
presse 
We cannot do more than allude to the growth of population 
and civilization in those localities which, from their extent of fer- 
tile soil or favorable commercial position, rose into eminence, and 
became the seats of powerful nations. But it must be borne in 
mind, that, although these localities were varied and wide-spread, 
they occupied but a small portion of the entire surface of the Ar- 
thipelago, and that the remainder continued to be thinly inhab- 
ited by uncivilized tribes, communities, or wandering families. 
Prevented, until a very recent date, by stubborn prejudices and. 
tions have not directly affected them at all ; and the indirect op- 
eration of the new power, and mercantile ‘and political policies 
which they introduced, has been productive 
very little good. While, on the one hand, "the native industry 
and trade have been stimulated by increased demand and by the 
freedom enjoyed in the English ports, they have, on the other 
hand, been subjected by the Portuguese, English and Dutch, to a 
series of despotic restraints, extending over a period of three hun- 
dred years; and, within the range of the last nation’s influence, 
continued, however modified, to this hour: which far more than 
eeemacrbolanoe all the advantages that can be placed in the oppo- 
site scale. 
The effect of the successive immigrations, revolutions and ad- 
mixtures which we have indicated or alluded to, has been, that 
there are now in the Archipelago an extraordinary number of ra- 
ces, differing in color, habits, civilization and language, and liv- 
ing under forms of government and laws, or customs, exhibiting 
the greatest variety. The same cause which isolated the abori- 
gines into numerous distinct tribes and kept them separate,—the 
exuberant vegetation of the islands,—has resisted the influence, 
so far as it was originally amalgamating, of every successive for- 
eign cixiligetion that has dominated ; and the aboriginal nomades 
of the jungle and the sea, in their unchanged habits and mode of 
life, reveal to their European contemporary the condition of their 
race at a time when his own forefathers were as rude and far more 
savage. The more bilvilined races, after attaining a certain meas- 
ure of advancement, have been separated by their acquired hab- 
its from yo unaltered races, and have too often turned their su- 
_periority into the ee of oppressing, and thereby more com- 
- pletely i Saraiboning in the barbarism of the jungles, such of them 
Szcoyp Serigs, Vol. VI, *e 17.—Sept., 1848. 
ciel AE 
