Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/269

Rh are in the deep seas, and some practically belong more to the Australian system, through their flora and fauna, than to the Malayan.

Then next to Celebes comes the great island of Borneo, larger than France and Germany combined, south of which, across the Java Sea, stretches that long line of islands, over 1200 miles in length, from Sumatra to Timor, the nearest to Australia, and often called the Sunda Islands. Between them and Borneo and the Malay Peninsula are the shallow seas, and north-west of Borneo the China Sea. The deep seas and the shallow make the real division between the systems, though they merge one into the other. Here, too, is the great volcanic belt, for everywhere are volcanoes—active and extinct.

Leaving out Borneo and the Philippines, one may start at the New Guinea end and mention first the Aru Islands, which lie south of it, and between Dutch New Guinea and Australia. They are Papuan isles. There is one large island and several small isles round it. They lie 150 miles from the New Guinea coast, and probably once formed part of it, as the seas between are shallow. On one of them, the small island of Wamma, is situated Dobbo, a famous native trading station, on a spit of sand just wide enough for some rows of houses, which are large thatched sheds. Every house is a trading store full of all sorts of goods beloved of natives, and often there are five hundred traders there. They come from Macassar, Goram, and elsewhere, and many of them are Chinese, for these latter have for many centuries been at home in these seas. No Europeans live at it, but a Dutch Commissioner comes at long intervals to hear complaints and adjust matters. [Some Australians have now a pearl-shell fishing concession. The pearls I have seen, and one of which