Page:The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (IA journalindianar00loga).pdf/28

 such a knowledge of these that, in following our remarks, they will recall, or perhaps sometimes approach from new points, facts with which they have already made acquaintance, and even that mere allusions, where we cannot afford more, will expand in their memories into the fullness of reality.

The first and most general consideration in a physical review of the Archipelago is its relation to the Continent of Asia. In the platform, on which the largest and most important lands are distributed, we see a great root which the stupendous mass of Asia has sent forth from its south eastern side, and which, spreading far to the south beneath the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and there expanding and shooting up by its plutonic and volcanic energy, has covered them, and marked its track, with innumerable islands. That there is a real and not merely a fanciful connection between the Archipelago and Asia is demonstrable, although, when we endeavour to trace its history, we are soon lost in the region of speculation. So obvious is this connection that it has been a constant source of excitement to the imagination, which, in the traditions of the natives, and in the hypotheses of Europeans, has sought its origin in an earlier geographical unity. Certainly, if, in the progress of the elevatory and depressing movements which the region is probably undergoing even now, the land were raised but a little, we should see shallow seas dried up, the mountain ranges of Sumatra, Borneo, and Java become continental like those of the Peninsula, and great rivers flowing not only in the Straits of Malacca, whose current early navigators mistook for that of an inland stream, but through the wide valley of the China Sea, and by the deep and narrow Strait of Sunda, into the Indian Ocean. Thus the unity would become geographical, which is now only geological. That the great platform from which only mountains and hills rose above the sea level, till the materials drawn from them by the rains were rolled out into the present alluvial plains, is really an extension of the Asiatic mass, appears evident from the facts: amongst many others which require a separate geological paper for their discussion, and would be less readily