MALAYSIA AND THE PACIFIC ARCHIPELAGOES 
3 
2. Extent and Distribution of Lands and Islands. 
That portion of the equator stretching from Singa¬ 
pore across the Pacific to Guayaquil occupies almost 
exactly 180° of longitude, or half the circumference of 
the globe, and throughout almost the whole of this vast 
distance it traverses blue water. This boundless watery 
domain, which extends northward to Bering Straits, and 
southward to the Antarctic barrier of ice, is studded with 
many island groups, which are, nevertheless, very irregu¬ 
larly distributed over its surface. Its northern portion 
is almost unbroken ocean. Between latitude 30° TsT. and 
30° S., reefs, islets, and groups of coral formation abound, 
and towards the southern limit of this belt lamer islands 
O 
appear. To the west and south are the great islands of 
the Malay Archipelago and Australia. In the central 
Pacific, islands almost wholly cease at the 30th parallel 
of south latitude. Again, in its eastern part, scarcely a 
single island is to be found until a few occur near the 
American coast. It thus appears that all the greater 
land masses of Australasia form an obvious southern and 
south-eastern extension of the great Asiatic continent, 
while beyond, the islands rapidly diminish in size and 
number till, in the far east and north, we reach a vast 
expanse of unbroken ocean. 
In actual land area this division of the globe is not 
much larger than Europe, but if we take into account 
the amount of space it occupies upon the globe, and the 
position of its extreme points, it at once rises to the first 
rank, surpassing even the vast extent of the Asiatic 
continent. From the north-western extremity of Suma¬ 
tra, in 95° E. long., to the Marquesas in 138° W., is 
a distance of 127 degrees, or more than one-third of the 
