Indian Archipelago

“ In the same manner, then, as the Kurile and Japan Islands, the Lew-Chews, and Formosa, are but the more elevated parts of a great mountain-chain that rises on the eastern edge of the continent of Asia, so these islands are only the tops of another great chain which rises on a part of the southern border of the same continent, and indicates where the wide and deep basin of the Indian Ocean commences. ”

“ I had for some years turned my mind to the geography of the Indian Archipelago, and cherished an ardent desire to become better acquainted with a country combining the richest natural productions with an unrivaled degree of luxuriant beauty. ”

“ The geologist, who is fully impressed with the vast oscillations of level which have affected the earth's crust within late periods, will not fear to speculate on the recent elevation of the Mexican platform, or, more probably, on the recent submergence of land in the West Indian Archipelago, as the cause of the present zoological separation of North and South America. The South American character of the West Indian mammals 76 seems to indicate that this archipelago was formerly united to the southern continent, and that it has subsequently been an area of subsidence. ”

“ The soil appears to be very infertile, yet when the sun was approaching the western horizon, and the cumuli, floating in the pure air, slowly drew along their changing shadows over the innumerable hills and valleys, the whole scene was nearly as delightful as my first view of the tropics in coming up the Strait of Sunda. There is no road in the interior of the island, and every one who will travel the shortest distance, must go on horseback along the sandy beaches. ”

“ The Indian Ocean is filled with yellow and red islands. A legend asserting that pepper and spice are found in these islands (275) comes from Marco Polo’s description of the East Indian archipelago. The largest of all the islands, lying off the coast of India, is marked Taprobana (269) and probably represents Sumatra.
15 Africa
Leardo’s Africa, like that of the Este map, has a very unusual shape. Two gulfs reach inland from the Indian Ocean and from the Atlantic, partially cutting off the southern extremity of the continent. ”

“ Taking into consideration the proofs of recent elevation both on the fringed coasts and on some others (for instance, in South America) where there are no reefs, we are led to conclude that the great continents are for the most part rising areas: and from the nature of the coral-reefs, that the central parts of the great oceans are sinking areas. The East Indian archipelago, the most broken land in the world, is in most parts an area of elevation, but surrounded and penetrated, probably in more lines than one, by narrow areas of subsidence. ”

“ In these climates the heat of the air is temporized by the sea; besides which, neither the east nor west wind, which reign alternately in that part of the globe, can reach the Indian Archipelago without passing over seas of an immense extent. As their heat is not excessive, therefore, all these islands are peopled with brown men; but in New Guinea we again meet with red [343] blacks, and who, from the descriptions of travellers, seem to be absolute negroes, because the country they inhabit forms a continent to the east, and the wind is more hot than that which prevails in the Indian Ocean. ”

“ EAST INDIES, a name formerly applied vaguely, in its widest sense, to the whole area of India, Further India and the Malay Archipelago, in distinction from the West Indies, which, at the time of their discovery, were taken to be the extreme parts of the Indian region. ”

“ There was no lack of energy on the part of Indians of old in utilizing to the full the opportunities presented by nature for the development of Indian maritime activity—the fine geographical position of India in the heart of the Orient, with Africa on the west and the Eastern Archipelago and Australia on the east, her connection with the vast mainland of Asia on the north, her possession of a sea-board that extends over more than four thousand miles, and finally the network of rivers which opens up the interior. ”

“ One, particularly monstrous, appeared to have the body of a man and the head of a beast. A favorite model was to represent a man with the head of an elephant, seated on a throne that rested on a row of human skulls.
Hinduism was undoubtedly introduced into the archipelago in the same way as Mohammedanism—namely, by those who came from the West to trade, first into Sumatra, and afterward into Java and Celebes. ”

“ They are so well peopled that they are supposed to contain over twenty thousand souls. The natives are very industrious, and famous as boat-builders. The wood they use comes from their own hill-sides, and they need no iron to complete boats of considerable size, which they sell to the inhabitants of all that part of [244] the archipelago. Farther to the east are the Aru (in Dutch, Aroe) Islands, that is, “the islands of the casuarina-trees.” They number about eighty, and are very low, forming a chain about a hundred miles long and half as broad. ”

“ If we regard, as many authorities do, the Indo-African continent, submerged in comparatively, recent geological times by the waters of the Indian Ocean, as being the original home of primitive man, then it is easy to understand how he migrated from the subsiding Indo-African continent westward into the heart of Africa, and eastward to the Malay Peninsula by way of the Eastern Archipelago, at that time forming part of the mainland. Those members of the primitive race who migrated westward are supposed to have spread over the larger portion of the continent of Africa. ”

“ It is now raised in every part of the archipelago in such quantities as to form one of the chief articles of food for the natives. The Dutch never use it, and generally think it strange that it should [139] be made into bread for the very nicest tables in our land. I never knew the natives to grind it or pound it. They are accustomed to roast it on the ear after the kernels have become quite hard and yellow. Our house in this tropical garden was merely a bamboo hut, with a broad veranda, which afforded us an ample shelter from the pouring rains and scorching sunshine. ”

“ Every island in the Archipelago, in proportion to the abundance and value of its vegetable produce and its foreign intercourse, had one or more harbours, at which the products of the surrounding districts and islands were gathered and heaped up until the monsoon permitted the arrival of the merchant vessels from the West. At the beginning of the fine season, Arabs and Indians entered these harbours in their ships, and brought Indian and other manufactures and merchandise, which they were in the habit of exchanging for gold, gum, spices, tortoise-shell, rosin, jewels, and such like. ”

“ The more insular condition at this period of Australia, India, and North Africa, with the depression and probable fertility of the Central Asiatic plateau, would lead to the Indian Ocean being traversed by regular trade-winds instead of by variable monsoons, and thus the constant vis a tergo, which is so efficient in the Atlantic, would keep up a steady and powerful current towards the northern parts of the Indian Ocean, and thence through the midst of the European archipelago to the northern seas. ”

“ Look at the space of ocean from near the southern end of the Low Archipelago to the northern end of the Marshall Archipelago, a length of 4,500 miles, in which, as far as is known, every island, except Aurora which lies just without the Low Archipelago, is atoll-formed. The eastern and western boundaries of our map are continents, and they are rising areas: the central spaces of the great Indian and Pacific Oceans, are mostly subsiding ”

“ The Indians are busy launching their canoes, preparing war against the candle-fish, which they catch when they come to the surface to sport in the moonlight. As the rising moon now clears the shadow of the hills, her rays slant down on the green sea, just rippled by the land-breeze. And now, like a vast sheet of pearly nacre, we may see the glittering shoals of the fish—the water seems alive with them. Out glides the dusky Indian fleet, the paddles stealthily plied by hands far too experienced to let a splash be heard. ”

“ The luminosities of tropic foliage could only be imitated in fire. He who desires to paint a West Indian forest,—a West Indian landscape,—must take his view from some great height, through which the colors come to his eye softened and subdued by distance,—toned with blues or purples by the astonishing atmosphere.
... It is sunset as I write these lines, and there are witchcrafts of color. Looking down the narrow, steep street opening to the bay, I see the motionless silhouette of the steamer on a perfectly green sea,—under a lilac sky,—against a prodigious orange light. ”

“ Chapter XIII THERE is no large body of water which can assume the profound smoothness of the Indian Ocean; to every other ocean there is a ground swell, as if it had never settled from the rude measures of the Creation. The Indian Ocean on good behavior is smoother than the sky above it—by day sunnier and bluer, starrier by night. It is so warm that the sun goes to bed naked, with an unperverted smile ”

“ The great continent of India being called an island is explained in a parable from the Jinâlankâra, given at p. 87 of the same work, likening the outer Sakwala ridge or boundary of the universe to the rim of a [386] jar or vessel; the vessel filled with sauce representing the ocean and the continents, like masses of cooked rice floating in the same.
At p. 82, he quotes from the first-mentioned commentary a description of the mountain of Méru itself, illustrative of the habitual exaggeration of the Indian sacred writers. ”

“ In the days of the early explorers, after the islands discovered by Columbus were called the West Indies, some people began to call the Indian continent the East Indies, to distinguish it; and some of the papers about India drawn up for the information of Parliament about Indian affairs still use this name, but it is not a familiar use to most people. ”

“ The attractions offered by such products of tropical seas are by no means limited to the untutored tastes of the American Indian. In India, China, and Siam, the Pyrum, and other large and beautiful shells of the Indian Ocean, are no less highly prized by the natives, not only as an easily wrought material for implements and personal ornaments ”

“ Small bays with sandy beaches white with broken clam shells mark the shore, and if across the beach a stream of crystal water rippled to the sea, one Indian lodge or more was sure to be erected on the rising land behind; for Indians always choose to build their homes on sheltered sandy bays where pure fresh water runs, and so in years which are among those past and gone one could not fail to see the blue wood smoke of Indian fires hanging like gauze above the little bays ”

“ The mixed inhabitants are settled upon lands which shelve down from the mountains to the Atlantic coast, or along the banks{252} of the mighty rivers which flow through the impenetrable forests out to sea. There are vast districts of virgin forest and trackless wild where white man has never penetrated, and where the aboriginal Indian is just as savage and untamed as were his ancestors upwards of four centuries ago when European mariners first landed on their shores. ”

“ Mightiest among rivers, it is the connecting link of adverse climates and contrasted races; and, while at its northern source the fur-clad Indian shivers in the cold, where it mingles with the ocean, the growth of the tropics springs along its banks, and the panting negro cools his limbs in its refreshing waters. ”

“ Doctor, “is in all respects a country to be desired by Indians. It is a mild climate—the land is good, the forests full of game, and the lakes and rivers abounding with fish. The region itself is not only remote from the territories claimed by the individual States; but it is in the exclusive occupancy of Indian tribes, and destined in the plan of the national government for that purpose. Besides, it is vast, and not only sufficient for the tribes already there, but more than sufficient for all your purposes and theirs. ”

“ In our voyage from the Gulf of Aden to Colombo we have made a great circuit of the Indian Ocean, yet from beginning to end we have never lost touch with Indian trade and Indian people. The islands and ports which we have visited are only to be understood as parts of a larger whole, united not divided by the sea. ”

“ If it is possible for a West Indian forest to be described at all, it could not be described more powerfully than it has been by Dr. E. Rufz, a creole of Martinique, from one of whose works I venture to translate the following remarkable pages:
... "The sea alone, because it is the most colossal of earthly spectacles,—only the sea can afford us any term of comparison for the attempt to describe a grand-bois;—but even then one must imagine the sea on a day of storm, suddenly immobilized in the expression of its mightiest fury. ”

“ Since the life of the Indian is one of travel and exploration, not for the benefit of science, but for his own convenience and pleasure, he is accustomed to find himself in pathless regions—now in the deep woods, now upon the vast, shimmering prairie, or again among the tangled water-ways of a mighty lake studded with hundreds, even thousands, of wooded islands. ”

“ Along this thoroughfare Indian colonists, traders, and priests carried the elements of Indian civilization to the easternmost Sunda Isles; and Oriental wares, sciences and religions moved westward to the margin of Europe and Africa. The Indian Ocean produced a civilization of its own, with which it colored a vast semi-circle of land reaching from Java to Abyssinia, and more faintly, owing to the wider divergence of race, the further stretch from Abyssinia to Mozambique. ”