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ART. VI-1. Dictionary of the Indian Islands.
Crawfurd, F.R.G.S. London, 1859.

By John 2. Java; or, How to manage a Colony. By J. W. B. Money, Barrister-at-Law. London, 1861.

3. The Indian Archipelago: its History and Present State. By Horace St. John.

4. Report of Her Majesty's Secretaries of Legation, No. 4. Presented to both Houses of Parliament. 1861.

5. A Visit to the Philippine Islands. By Sir John Bowring, LL.D., F.R.S., late Governor of Hong Kong, H. B. M. Plenipotentiary in China, &c. London, 1859.

6. The Singapore Free Press.

AFEW years ago great interest was felt in the Indian Archi

pelago as the theatre of a very remarkable enterprise. A private individual had formed the strange, and, it was thought, the chimerical project of establishing an ascendency in a portion of the largest island of the Indian Seas, for the purpose of effecting a radical change in the pursuits of an aboriginal race, reclaiming it from piracy, and instructing it how to acquire property with less effort than was required to wrest it from others. Sir James Brooke, the Rajah of Sarawak, if he has not yet fully accomplished all that his philanthropic scheme embraced, has made considerable progress in the noble work to which he addressed himself. He has planted the germ of European civilization in the least known island in the world, accustomed a portion of its people to a steady dispensation of justice, and made the name of England respected among fierce and lawless races.

The Portuguese, the Dutch, the Spanish, and the English governments have all possessed at different times important trading establishments in this archipelago of freebooters. Several considerable islands have long been in their possession, and the seats of settled government. Java has attained a high but peculiar civilization. Sumatra has not yet felt the influence of European intercourse, except on a small portion of its coasts. Of the interior of Borneo, scarcely anything is known; but there have long been important settlements on its shores. The group of the Philippines, exhibiting many interesting features, has received the civilization of that great power of the sixteenth century which, planting a foot in either hemisphere, bestrode the world like a colossus. The Moluccas, the almost fabled land of spices, still own the sway of a remote nation of merchants; while Great Britain, hitherto diverted by her vast enterprises in continental India, and perhaps disdaining the comparatively

comparatively insignificant temptations presented by the islands of the intertropical seas, has, by her settlement at Singapore, by the generous encouragement which, on the first achievement of his great successes, she afforded to the Rajah of Sarawak, and recently by her occupation of Labuan, evinced a determination to extend her commercial and political relations into regions which have been hitherto considered the appanage of a small European power, to whose influence they have been almost exclusively left.

We propose to take a survey of the present condition of the principal islands of the Eastern Archipelago, their productions, commerce, and governments, believing that their importance will from year to year become more highly appreciated, and that they are rapidly acquiring a value in European estimation far greater than they have hitherto possessed.

The Eastern Archipelago extends over a space of more than 8000 miles, and consists of an immense labyrinth of islands, among which are at least twenty countries of considerable size, and one which nearly equals Europe in extent. This cluster of islands and islets, scattered in irregular profusion over the Southern Ocean, is supposed by some geologists to consist of the fragments of a vast continent which has been broken up by some mighty convulsion of nature in ages far beyond the historical era; but whether it is composed of the débris of a former continent, or whether a multitude of islands have arisen slowly from the deep, is a problem which no one has yet satisfactorily solved. Commencing at the further extremity of the Bay of Bengal, this wonderful archipelago stretches eastward far into the Pacific, through 50 degrees of longitude, while in breadth it extends through 31 degrees of latitude. It comprises islands, and groups of islands, inhabited by races differing widely in character. It is not exposed to the extremes of heat. The air is cooled by constant currents; and the monsoons, in their regular recurrence, purify the atmosphere, and disperse the pestilential miasma generated by a fierce sun in forests and swamps which remain in a state of primitive nature, Abundant rains fertilize the soils, and produce a magnificence of vegetation which no country but Brazil can rival; and it has been, and still to some extent continues, the theatre of prodigious volcanic action, to which it owes much of its unrivalled beauty and fertility; for ashes and scoria, if they blast and destroy for a time the luxuriant tropical flora, afterwards constitute the basis, and become the cause, of a most exuberant vegetation. In Java there are forty-six volcanic peaks, twenty of which still occasionally emit vapour and flame.

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The whole archipelago, indeed, forms part of a great volcanic area extending into the very centre of Asia. These eruptive forces must have operated in remote ages with inconceivable violence, detaching masses of land from the continent, shattering islands into fragments, and throwing the whole into disorder. Of the fearful energy with which these subterranean forces have manifested themselves, even in modern times, the great eruption of Tomboro, in the island of Sumbawa, about 200 miles from the eastern extremity of Java, is a notable example. In 1815 this volcano, which had been for some time in a state of smouldering activity, burst forth with the most tremendous violence in the month of April, and did not cease to eject lava until July. The sound of the incessant explosions was heard in Sumatra, distant 970 geographical miles in a direct line; and at Ternate, in the opposite direction, at a distance of 720 miles. Out of a population of 12,000 in the province of Tomboro, only twentysix individuals survived. On the side of Java, the ashes were carried to a distance of 300 miles, and 217 towards Celebes; and the floating cinders to the westward of Sumatra formed a mass two feet thick, and several miles in extent, through which ships with difficulty forced their way. The finest particles were transported to the islands of Amboyna and Banda, 800 miles east from the site of the volcano; and the area over which the volcanic effects extended was 1000 English miles in circumference, including the whole of the Molucca Islands, Java, and a considerable portion of Celebes, Sumatra, and Borneo.*

But what are the true boundaries of this great archipelago? Geographical science is somewhat arbitrary in its classification. Where is the line of demarcation to be drawn if there is none apparently traced by nature between the different groups ranging from Ceylon to New Guinea? For even Ceylon, it has been recently suggested, possesses far more affinity with the islands to the east than with the continent of which it would seem, from its position, to have once formed a part. Sir Emerson Tennent, in his admirable and exhaustive work on this beautiful island, considers it erroneous to regard it as a prolongation of the great Indian mountain-chain, although he admits that in its geological elements there is a similarity between the southern extremity of India and the elevated portions of Ceylon, while stating that there are many important particulars in which the specific differences are irreconcileable with the notion of any previous continuity. The flora and fauna of the island, it is said, suggest a distinction between it and the Indian continent. Without at present discussing this

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interesting subject, we may observe that the climatic conditions arising from the insular character of the country, and e consequent exposure to the influence of the sea, may go far to account for most of the specific differences between its flora and that of the continent of India; and that if it possesses some botanical affinities with islands of the further east, they may be accounted for by atmospherical influences. Thus the nutmeg and the mangostein, two plants peculiar to the Eastern Archipelago, have been introduced with singular success at Ceylon, while their cultivation has entirely failed in Bengal. The true cinnamon of Ceylon, again, is not a native plant of any island of the Asiatic archipelago; but most of the large islands produce a small species of little value, although Ceylon cinnamon has been cultivated with success in Java and in the British settlements in the Straits of Malacca. We must, therefore, reserve for future consideration Sir Emerson's theory that this island, separated from the Indian continent only by a narrow strait, ought to be regarded as the centre of a geographical circle, possessing within itself forms whose allied species radiate far into the temperate regions, as well as into Africa, Australia, and the isles of the Eastern Archipelago.

But, whatever may be its natural boundaries, the archipelago, if its islands were combined, would undoubtedly constitute a mass of land forming the Terra Australis which ancient geographers imagined to exist, and which they conceived necessary for the balance of the world. The Eastern Archipelago is, however, limited by modern geography to the boundaries before indicated; and if the disruptive forces in these regions have been formerly predominant, the creative and constructive power is now the most active. The zoophyte is adding silently and incessantly to the number of these island-groups; coral-reefs are constantly emerging from the waters; seeds, deposited by birds, or wafted by winds, quickly vegetate; verdure spreads over the waste; and palm-trees rise in tufted groves, as if by enchantment, from the ocean. The hidden but ever active energy of the coral-insect makes the navigation of the archipelago exceedingly difficult, for charts and soundings do not long form safe guides where an unseen power is always at work, reducing the depth of seas, and converting water into dry land.

The intercourse between continental Asia and the islands of the archipelago dates from a very remote period. Their rare products were in request in China and India long before they were heard of in Europe. Camphor and spices, two of the most esteemed productions of these islands, were used by the Chinese two thousand years ago; the one for diffusing an aromatic fra

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grance through their temples, the other as indispensable condiments in their feasts. A Hindoo empire long flourished in Java, where many magnificent ruins still attest its duration and greatness. The Arabs subsequently gained a footing there, as well as in the other islands of the archipelago, and gradually supplanted the religion and governments of India. The Malays are now the dominant race, and they have reduced, where it was possible, the aboriginal population to slavery. The Malay kingdoms have generally perished; but the Malay people remain, and constitute the most energetic portion of the inhabitants, possessing virtues which, developed by a firm and beneficent government, might raise them high in the scale of civilization.

Although the piratical system has received a severe check, and may be considered as destroyed in some of its former haunts, it is still in full operation elsewhere. On the north-west coast of Borneo, the Dayaks have been reduced to order, but the Malays in other parts of the archipelago still carry on their depredations: much, therefore, remains to be done before the seas are completely cleared of these lawless freebooters. The Malay pirates have had their apologists in England ;* and an outrageous system of robbery on the high seas was assumed to be only a war of tribes, originating in an imperfect civilization. Although their power has been broken, and their numbers have been considerably diminished, their deeds fill so large a space in the modern history of the archipelago that we shall concisely describe them and their system.

Piracy seems to be the normal condition of a people in a certain state of civilization, inhabiting islands or the indented coasts of maritime countries. The Archipelago of Greece swarmed with pirates when Rome was in the zenith of her power; and it required all the energy and ability of Pompey to exterminate the hordes which had become the nuisance of the civilized world. The career of some of those remote ancestors on whose blood we pride ourselves in England, would not, we fear, bear a very rigorous scrutiny. The Mediterranean in modern days has exhibited a piratical power, with which regular governments held a quasi-diplomatic intercourse, and to which they even paid a species of black-mail. The Malay pirates exist under somewhat similar circumstances, and are exposed to the same temptations as the vikings of Europe when they issued from creeks and bays to prey upon defenceless traders, sack peaceful villages, and even considerable towns. The Malays

* Our readers will remember the persevering parliamentary attacks upon Sir James Brooke in reference to this subject, and the denunciations of Exeter Hall. do

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