Page:The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (IA journalindianar00loga).pdf/29

 appreciated by the general reader:—that its direction, as a whole, is that which a continuation of south-eastern Asia, under the same plutonic action which produced it, would possess;—the mountain ranges, which form the latter, sink into it irregularly in the lines of their longitudinal axes;—in one zone, that of the Peninsula, the connection is an actual geographical one;—the Peninsula is obviously continued in the dense clusters of islands and rocks, stretching on the parallel of its elevation and of the strike of its sedimentary rocks, from Singapore to Banka, and almost touches Sumatra, the mountain ranges of which are, notwithstanding, parallel to it;—Borneo and Celebes appear to represent the broader or eastern branch of the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, from which they are separated by the area of the China Sea, supposed to be sinking;—and, finally, nearly the whole Archipelago is surrounded by a great volcanic curve rooted in Asia itself, and the continuity of which demonstrates that the platform and the continental projection with which it is geographically connected are really united, at this day, into one geological region by a still vigorous power of plutonic expansiveness, no longer, to appearance, forming hypogene elevations, but expending itself chiefly in the numerous volcanic vents along the borders where it sinks into the depths of the ocean.

Whether the present platform ever rose above the level of the sea, and surrounded the now insular eminences with vast undulating plains of vegetation instead of a level expanse of water, we shall not hear seek to decide, although we think that Raffles and others who have followed in his steps too hastily connected the supposed subsidence with the existing geological configuration of the region, and neglected the all important evidence of the comparative distribution of the living flora and fauna, which seems to prove that the ancient southern continent, if such there was, had subsided before they came into existence. No conclusive reasons have yet been adduced why we should consider the islands of the Archipelago as the summits of a partially submerged, instead of a partially emerged, continent. But whether it was the sinking of the continent that deluged all the southern lowlands of Asia, leaving only the mountain summits visible, or its elevation that was arrested by the ex-