330 THE OCEAN. 
Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and pene- 
trated to climes which had hitherto been invested 
with all the romance of mystery and fable; then 
commencing a commerce which has poured incalcu- 
lable wealth into the lap of Europe. 
This immense archipelago, which occupies a tract 
of the Ocean four thousand miles in length, and 
fourteen hundred in breadth, is an assemblage of 
islands perfectly unique. The multitudinous islets 
of the Pacific, if all united, would not together form 
a third-rate island of this group. The land, though 
broken with countless thousands of isles, so equally 
divides the space with the sea, that one is at a loss 
to say which predominates. A large majority of 
the smaller isles and reefs are of the same struc- 
ture as the coral atolls of Polynesia, and present 
a similar character in their zoology and botany; but 
the larger tracts of land, almost a continent in their 
dimensions, are of the old formations. The widely- 
scattered groups of small islands on the northern 
boundary, indeed,—the Ladrones, the Carolines, the 
Pelews, &c., we are at a loss to distinguish: they 
are usually arranged in the Indian Archipelago, 
while they are decidedly Polynesian in their cha- 
racters, 
The boats which are used by the natives of these 
islands, from their very peculiar construction, as 
well as from their unrivalled powers of sailing, 
demand a moment’s notice. Lord Anson, who first 
met with them at the Ladrone Islands, and: who calls 
them flying proas, considers them “so singular and 
extraordinary an invention, that it would do honour 
