Page:The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (IA journalindianar00loga).pdf/33

 a faint transcript of the reality, and that our imagination can never conceive the dreadful spectacle which still appals their memories, Fortunately these awful explosions of the earth, which to man convert nature into the supernatural, occur at rare intervals; and, though scarcely a year elapse without some volcano bursting into action, the greater portion of the Archipelago being more than once shaken, and even the ancient granitic floor of the Peninsula trembling beneath us, this terrestrial instability has ordinarily no worse effect than to dispel the illusion that we tread upon a solid globe, to convert the physical romance of geological history into the familiar associations of our own lives, and {o unite the events of the passing hour with these which first fitted the world for the habitation of man.

We have spoken of the impression which the exteriour [sic] beauty of the Archipelago makes upon the voyager, and the fearful change winch sometimes comes over it, when the sea around him is hidden beneath floating ashes mingled with the charred wrecks of the noble forests which had clothed the mountain sides; but, hurried though we are from one part of our slight sketch to another, we cannot leave the vegetation of this great region without looking upon it more closely. To recall the full charms, however, of the forests of the Archipelago,—which is to speak of the Archipelago itself, for the greater portion of it is at this moment, as the whole of if once was, clothed to the waters edge with frees;—we must animate their solitudes with the tribes which dwell there in freedom, ranging through their boundless shade as unconscious of the presence of man, and as unwitting of his dominion, as they were thousands of years ago, when he did not dream that the world held such lands and such creatures.

When we pass from the open sea of the Archipelago into the deep shade of ifs mountain forests, we have realized all that, in Europe, our fancies ever pictured of the wildness and beauty of primeval nature. Trees of gigantic forms and exuberant foliage rise on every side: each species shooting up ifs trunk to its utmost measure of development, and striving, as it seams, to escape from the dense crowd. Others, as if no room were left for them