Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I
Physical Geography
If we look at a globe or a map of the Eastern hemisphere, we shall perceive between Asia and
Australia a number of large and small islands, forming a connected group distinct from those
great masses of land, and having little connexion with either of them. Situated upon the
Equator, and bathed by the tepid water of the great tropical oceans, this region enjoys a cli-
mate more uniformly hot and moist than almost any other part of the globe, and teems with
natural productions which are elsewhere unknown. The richest of fruits and the most precious
of spices are here indigenous. It produces the giant flowers of the Rafflesia, the great green-
winged Ornithoptera (princes among the butterfly tribes), the man-like Orang-utan, and the
gorgeous Birds of Paradise. It is inhabited by a peculiar and interesting race of mankind—the
Malay, found nowhere beyond the limits of this insular tract, which has hence been named
the Malay Archipelago.
To the ordinary Englishman this is perhaps the least-known part of the globe. Our posses-
sions in it are few and scanty; scarcely any of our travellers go to explore it; and in many col-
lections of maps it is almost ignored, being divided between Asia and the Pacific Islands. It
thus happens that few persons realize that, as a whole, it is comparable with the primary divi-
sions of the globe, and that some of its separate islands are larger than France or the Austrian
empire. The traveller, however, soon acquires different ideas. He sails for days, or even for
weeks, along the shores of one of these great islands, often so great that its inhabitants be-
lieve it to be a vast continent. He finds that voyages among these islands are commonly
reckoned by weeks and months, and that their several inhabitants are often as little known to
each other as are the native races of the northern to those of the southern continent of Amer-
ica. He soon comes to look upon this region as one apart from the rest of the world, with its
own races of men and its own aspects of nature; with its own ideas, feelings, customs, and
modes of speech, and with a climate, vegetation, and animated life altogether peculiar to it-
self.
