Yes, the aborigines must have led a happy, contented life in such a place; while the European grumbled, growled, and vilified everything, after the manner of his kind.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MERGUI ARCHIPELAGO.
“Alone she sat—alone! that worn-out word,
So idly spoken and so coldly heard;
Yet all the poets sing, and grief hath known,
Of hope laid waste, knells in that word—alone!”
Anyone glancing at a map of the world’s two hemispheres, cannot fail to notice that all the continents end in more or less pointed extremities looking due south, and that most of the larger islands, showing length in lieu of breadth, also lie nearly due north and south. The first half of the above remark is pointed by such examples as South America, Africa, India, and the prolongation from China in the direction now under notice; while the latter finds expression in the larger islands of the West India group; also in Sumatra, Java, Flores, Timor, New Guinea, and many others. Any attempt at an explanation of this curious symmetry in the conformation of our earth would be more appropriate to a manual of geography; and as it would involve the balancing of the many theories in favour of a local or universal deluge, I shall not enter into it.
The islands of the archipelago we were now approaching partook much of the same character. After a run of three hundred miles we came to them, a group keeping remarkably equidistant from the mainland, as far as Wellesley in the Malay Peninsula. Exceedingly beautiful and tempting they looked, as we passed each in turn; all well wooded, their shores composed, as the mainland, of sand and rock, but the only signs of life came from a few birds flitting about the trees, and a stray turtle basking on the shore. Man had not set his mark on the place.
As the steamer could not put us ashore we had to satisfy our curiosity by the aid of the glass. One island, the largest we had yet passed, was, so the captain told me, associated with that historical period when the French and ourselves were still trying conclusions as to which power was to be predominant in the East.
An opening in the side facing the mainland led to a sort of basin in the interior of the island, a natural dock, which the French found very handy for their vessels under repairs. The British fleet was then in pursuit of them, and probably passed in sight of this identical island, never dreaming of the snug retreat within. Otherwise, it had gone badly with the French, who would have been caught in a trap; for a single British vessel would have sufficed to guard the entrance, until the enemy capitulated.