2 THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. [chap. i. 



found nowhere beyond the limit3 of this insular tract, 

 which has hence been named the Malay Archipelago. 



To the ordinary Englishman this is perhaps the least 

 known part of the globe. Our possessions in it are few 

 and scanty ; scarcely any of our travellers go to explore it ; 

 and in many collections of maps it is almost ignored, 

 being divided between Asia and the Pacific Islands. It 

 thus happens that few persons realize that, as a whole, it 

 is comparable with the primary divisions of the globe, and 

 that some of its separate islands are larger than France 

 or the Austrian empire. The traveller, however, soon 

 acquires different ideas. He sails for days, or even for 

 weeks, along the shores of one of these great islands, often 

 so great that its inhabitants believe it to be a vast con- 

 tinent. He finds that voyages among these islands are 

 commonly reckoned by weeks and months, and that their 

 several inhabitants are often as little known to each other 

 as are the native races of the northern to those of the 

 southern continent of America. He soon comes to look 

 upon this region as one apart from the rest of the world, 

 with its own races of men and its own aspects of nature ; 

 with its own ideas, feelings, customs, and modes of speech, 

 and with a climate, vegetation, and animated life altogether 

 peculiar to itself. 



From many points of view these islands form one 

 compact geographical whole, and as such they have always 



