THE INDIAN' ARCHIPELAGO. 
9 
alligators. An endless variety of fragile and richly colored shells 
not only lie empty on the sandy beaches, but are tenanted by 
pagurian crabs which, in clusters, batten on every morsel of 
fat seaweed that has been left by the retiring waves. The coasts 
are fringed with living rocks of beautiful colours, and shaped like 
stars, flowers, bushes and other symmetrical forms. Of multi¬ 
tudes of peculiar fishes which inhabit the seas, the dugong or 
Malayan mermaid, most attracts our wonder. 
Before we leave this part of our subject, we would assure any 
European reader who may suspect that we have in aught writ¬ 
ten too warmly of the physical beauty of the Archipelago, that 
the same Nature which, in the west, only reveals her highest and 
most prodigal terrestrial beauty to the imagination of the poet, 
has here ungirdled herself, and given her wild and glowing charms, 
in all their fullness, to the eye of day. The ideal has here pass¬ 
ed into the real. The few botan'sts who have visited this region 
declare, that from the multitude of its noble trees, odorous and 
beautiful flowers, and wonderful vegetable forms of all sorts, 
it is inconceivable in its magnificence, luxuriance, and variety. 
The zoologists, in their turn, bear testimony to the rare, curious, 
varied and important animals which inhabit it; and the number 
and character of those already known is such as to justify one 
of the most distinguished of the day in expressing his belief, that 
u no region on the face of the earth would furnish more novel, 
splendid, or extraordinary forms than the unexplored islands in 
the eastern range of the Indian Archipelago. 5 ' 
Hitherto we have faintly traced the permanent influence of the 
physical configuration of the Archipelago in tempering the inter- 
tropical heat, regulating the monsoons, determining the distribu¬ 
tion of plants and animals, and giving to the whole region its pe¬ 
culiar character of softness and exuberant beauty. But when 
its rock foundations were laid, the shadow of its future human, 
as well as natural, history spread over them. Its primal physical 
architecture, in diminishing the extent" of dry land, has increased 
the variety in the races who inhabit it; while the mineralogical 
constitution of the insulated elevations, the manner in which they 
arc dispersed throughout its seas, and all the meteoric and bota¬ 
nical consequences, have affected them in innumerable modes. 
G 
