Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/32

12 thousand rainy seasons shall have passed away they will be reunited"; but Alfred Russel Wallace denies it, and proves that Java was the first to drop away from the Asiatic mainland and become an island.

While the sun rode high in the cloudless white zenith above our ship the whole world seemed aswoon. Hills and islands swam and wavered in the heat and mists, and the glare and silence were terrible and oppressive. One could not shake off the sensation of mystery and unreality, of sailing into some unknown, eerie, other world. Every voice was subdued, the beat of the engines was scarcely felt in that glassy calm, and the stillness of the ship gave a strange sensation, as of a magic spell. It was not so very hot,—only 86° by the thermometer,—but the least exertion, to cross the deck, to lift a book, to pull a banana, left one limp and exhausted, with cheeks burning and the breath coming faster, that insidious, deceptive heat of the tropics declaring itself that steaming, wilting quality in the sun of Asia that so soon makes jelly of the white man's brain, and that in no way compares with the scorching, dry 96° in the shade of a North American, hot-wave summer day.

At five o'clock, while afternoon tea and bananas were being served on deck, we crossed the line that imaginary parting of the world, the invisible thread of the universe, the beginning and the end of all latitude—latitude 0°, longitude 103° east, the sextant told. The position was geographically exciting. We were literally "down South," and might now speak disrespectfully of the equator if we wished. A breeze sprang up as soon as we crossed the line, and all that evening