THE MOLUCCAS 
331 
The island was originally one vast, unbroken forest, and 
is so still, except around the town. The highest peak 
attains an elevation of 4010 feet. In the north-west of 
the island is a volcano, which has been in eruption many 
times between 1674 and 1824, but since that date it 
has been so completely quiescent that most of the in¬ 
habitants will not believe that any volcano exists. They 
are supported in this opinion by the fact that no one 
now knows exactly where it is, there being no lofty cone, 
and nothing to distinguish it at a distance from the 
forest-clad hills which surround it. Neither is Amboina 
now much subject to earthquakes, although many have 
occurred, and may any day occur again. While Dampier 
was here in 1705 there was a great earthquake, which 
lasted two days, and did great mischief, the ground 
bursting open in many places, and swallowing up entire 
families in their houses. The ground swelled like a wave 
of the sea, and the massive walls of the fort were rent 
asunder in several places. 
Amboina was first known to Europeans in 1511, in 
which year Serrao, one of the commanders of the fleet of 
d’Abreu, who had been sent by Albuquerque to discover 
the Moluccas, landed with his crew, having been ship¬ 
wrecked on some reefs to the south. The town was 
taken from the Portuguese by the Dutch in 1609. It 
is celebrated as having been long the residence of the 
botanist Rumphius, who died here in 1693, and of 
Yalentijn, the historian of the Dutch Indies. The 
inhabitants of the island, as might be surmised from its 
having been so long under foreign dominion and a 
centre of trade, are a mixed race, formed chiefly of 
Moluccan Malays and indigenous Ceramese. They in¬ 
habit a number of villages round the coast, speak 
several different languages, and are all professedly either 
