THIS PttESENT CONDITION' Of 
& 
such a ' knowledge of these that, in following our remarks, they 
will recall, or perhaps sometimes approach from new points, 
facts with which they have already made acquaintance, and 
even that mere allusions, where we cannot afford more, will 
expand in their memories into the fullness of reality. 
The first and most general consideration in a physical review 
of the Archipelago is its relation to the Continent of Asia. In 
the platform, on which the largest and most important lands 
are distributed, we see a great root which the stupendous 
mass of Asia has sent forth from its south eastern side, and 
which, spreading far to the south beneath the waters of the In¬ 
dian and Pacific Oceans, and there expanding and shooting up 
by its plutonic and volcanic energy, has covered them, and marked 
its track, with innumerable islands. That there is a real and 
not merely a fanciful connection between the Archipelago and 
Asia is demonstrable, although, when we endeavour to trace its 
history, we are soon lost in the region of speculation. So ob¬ 
vious is this connection that it has been a constant source of 
excitement to the imagination, which, in the traditions of the 
natives, and in the hypotheses of Europeans, has sought its 
origin in an earlier geographical unity. Certainly, if, in the 
progress of the elevatory and depressing movements which the 
region is probably undergoing even now, the land were raised 
but a little, we should see shallow seas dried up, the mountain 
ranges of Sumatra, Borneo, and Java become continental like those 
of the Peninsula, and great rivers flowing not only in the Straits of 
Malacca, whose current early navigators mistook for that of an in¬ 
land stream, but through the wide valley of the China Sea, and by 
the deep and narrow Strait of Sunda, into the Indian Ocean. Ihus 
the unity would become geographical, which is now only geological. 
That the great platform from which only mountains and hills 
rose above the sea level, till the materials drawn from them by 
the rains were rolled out into the present alluvial plains, is 
really an extension of the Asiatic mass, appears evident from 
the facts: amongst many others which require a separate geolo¬ 
gical paper for their discussion, and would be less readily 
