Page:The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (IA journalindianar00loga).pdf/35

 alligators. An endless variety of fragile and richly colored shells not only lie empty on the sandy beaches, but are tenanted by pagurian crabs which, ta clusters, batten on every morsel of fat seaweed that has been left by the retiring waves. The coasts are fringed with living rocks of beautiful colours, and shaped like stars, flowers, bushes and other symmetrical forms. Of multitudes of peculiar fishes which inhabit the seas, the dugong or Malayan mermaid, most attracts our wonder.

Before we leave this part of our subject, we would assure any European reader who may suspect that we have in aught written too warmly of the physical beauty of the Archipelago, that the same Nature which, in the west, only reveals her highest and most prodigal terrestrial beauty to the imagination of the poet, has here ungirdled herself, and given her wild and glowing charms, in all their fullness, to the eye of day. The ideal has here passed into the real. The few botanists who have visited this region declare, that from the multitude of its noble trees, odorous and beautiful flowers, and wonderful vegetable forms of all sorts, it is inconceivable in its magnificence, luxuriance, and variety. The zoologists, in their turn, bear testimony to the rare, curious, varied and important animals which inhabit it; and the number and character of those already known is such as to justify one of the most distinguished of the day in expressing his belief, that "no region on the face of the earth would furnish more novel, splendid, or extraordinary forms than the unexplored islands in the eastern range of the Indian Archipelago."

Hitherto we have faintly traced the permanent influence of the physical configuration of the Archipelago in tempering the intertropical heat, regulating (he monsoons, determining the distribution of plants and animals, and giving to the whole region its peculiar character of softness and exuberant beauty. But when its rock foundations were laid, the shadow of its future human, as well as natural, history spread over them. Its primal physical architecture, in diminishing the extent of dry land, has increased the variety in the races who inhabit it; while the mineralogical constitution of the insulated elevations, the manner in which they are dispersed throughout its seas, and all the meteoric and botanical consequences, have affected them in innumerable modes.