66 AUSTEALASIA. 



France, another exceeding Great Britain in size, two surpassing Ireland, seven 

 more extensive than Corsica, and dozens bigger than Malta. The seas are every- 

 where studded with countless tanahs, pulos, or mesas, as the smaller islands and 

 islets are variously called, some settled, others uncultivated, or thinly if at all 

 inhabited. To the traveller lost in the maze of these innumerable insular groups, 

 Indonesia seems a boundless oceanic world. Coasting the larger islands for days 

 and weeks together in some native prau, he is bewildered by the constantly shifting 

 tropical scenes, the endless variety of lands and of peoples at all stages of culture, 

 and whose very names are unknown to him. Headlands with extinct or still 

 smoking volcanoes, coral banks, or insular forests, which seem to spring from the 

 surface of the water, are landmarks that indicate his progress through these inter- 

 minable island-studded seas. 



As a region of transition between the Asiatic and Australian continents, 

 Malaysia presents a strange contrast with the corresponding transitional region of 

 the arid Arabian peninsula between Asia and Africa. In the richness of its 

 insular development, the infinite variety of its landscapes, its brilliant vegetation, 

 the nu.mber of its animal species, the diversity of its populations and abun- 

 dant resources, the East Indian surpasses even the West Indian insular world 

 itself. The Central American archipelago yields also to the Asiatic in historic 

 importance, as well as in the economic value of the relations that have been 

 developed between these two regions and the rest of the world. The relatively 

 small island of Java alone has a larger population and moi-e abundant products 

 than the whole of Central America and the Antilles ; while numerous straits 

 between the islands offer to interoceanic traffic more extensi\'e and commodious 

 highways than the future Panama and Nicaraguan Canals can ever hope to 

 become. 



Traversed in its entire length by the equinoxial line, Indonesia might well be 

 called the garden of the world, not only, like the interior of Africa, because of its 

 high annual temperature, but also and especially thanks to its fertile and 

 copiously watered soil,, its exuberant vegetation, and the costly and varied 

 nature of its products. The very energy displayed by the igneous forces under 

 the Sunda Islands and adjacent lands contributes to make this region one of the 

 centres of terrestrial activity. Here the land quakes and is rent asunder even 

 more frequently than in the Central American and West Indian areas of volcanic 

 disturbance. Java, the most densely peopled and one of the best cultivated and 

 most productive islands in the world, is also the most violently agitated by under- 

 ground convulsions as well as the scene of the most numerous active craters. 



These remarkable lands are not inhabited by independent native populations. 

 A few unreduced tribes still find a refuge on the Sumatran plateaux, in the 

 forests of Borneo and other islands ; but numerically they represent but a very 

 small fraction of the Indonesian peoples. The more or less civilised Malayan 

 populations, who have commercially exercised so much influence throughout the 

 oceanic domain, and whose colonies have spread over an enormous expanse from 

 Madagascar to Polynesia, have never been fused into a compact national body, 



