The scattered group of the Moluccas, with the Banda and Ternate islands, 7950 square miles.
The great island of New Guinea, 262,800 square miles, which forms the transition of the Australian group.
On the south coast of Deccan, the great island of Ceylon, 25,860 square miles.
These rows and groups of islands, embracing an aggregate of 1,095,000 square miles, form a kind of insular isthmus from the southeastern extremity of Asia to the northwest of Australia, though broken by unnumbered straits. If lines be drawn from Sumatra and from Hainan to Cape York, on the north coast of Australia, an ideal isthmus would be formed not unlike that which connects North and South America. If this insular isthmus be further conceived to have been thrown up by volcanic forces, as that of Panama seems to have been, an addition of 1,095,000 square miles has been made in this way to the most productive portions of the world. So great is the accession of territory that it has become the abode of a distinct race—the Malay—which hardly finds a home at all on the Asiatic shore. Asia has received very little advantage from this vast archipelago. Only the southeast coast has been affected by it; the continent, as a whole, has not been reached by its influence. On the contrary, Australia has been largely affected by it in its productive and ethnographical character. Not only was it first discovered through the agency of these islands, but it probably derives its population from them; it has received many of its animals and plants from them—the sugar-cane, the sago palm, the bread-fruit tree, the dog, and the swine.
In Polynesia, which, in point of size, far surpasses the Antilles group north of South America, we have the most dismembered region on the surface of the globe. It is the highest degree of insulation, of individualization, and results from the extreme carrying out of dispersing causes. The space occupied by the greater Sunda group, with its five seas—the China, Java, Molucca, Celebes, and Mindoro—together with the islands adjacent, the whole lying between longitude 110° and 160° east and latitude 10° south and 20° north, a tract 3525 miles long and 2115 miles wide may worthily be compared with the area of Europe. Such a mass of island groups and single isles, belonging not to Asia with any strict right, but in truth a maritime world of itself, having but the slightest connections with the adjacent continent, is not to be compared with the island system of Europe, which is bound to the main land by the closest ties.
Were a similar insular dismemberment the universal principle on which the world is constructed, and were there no continents whatever, there would be an entire want of direct dependence in nations upon each other, and a degree of independence which would be fatal to the best interests of man. Europe would be broken up into a number of great islands, like Borneo, and into countless islets. In the conformation of Europe, however, there is the happiest system of compensations, and the most harmonious play of contrasts to be found in the world. The disadvantages of a too great dividing up into islands, as in Polynesia, and of too compact and unrifted a central mass, as in Africa, are alike shunned. Both extremes could not fail to be injurious to the best interests of the population. The fullness and richness of nature might, perhaps, be increased; but the effects on human life could not fail to be bad. Man’s highest development does not consist with any extreme in the natural world: it is linked to the action and reaction of contrasts. In Polynesia, the district of extreme dismemberment, the Malays are the least homogeneous of any race on the earth. Malays, Battahs, Dakkas, Horasuras, and Papuas are all engaged in destructive war on each other, and are among the most degraded peoples on the globe. In this region there is the greatest diversity in physical nature, but not in the essential characteristics of man. One point of accord ought not to be passed by: there, where the forces of nature, maritime and volcanic, are on the greatest scale known, the warlike passions of man are on a not less consuming scale. In Polynesia there are the rankest vegetation, the most fervid heat, the most costly spices, animals very large and rare; but man attains to no such superiority,—he degenerates in worth and takes a low place. Where the three natural kingdoms attain their perfection, man seems to linger in the rear.
In Africa, where there is perfect uniformity in nature, there is uniformity in man; and the negro stock, though prolific, gives no race of high development to the world. Both extremes are equally unfavorable to the advance of man; he must have, in order to expand and take the place to which his possibilities lead him, a sphere of mutual conditions, to which a compact continent like Africa and Central Asia can lay no claim, and at the same time be free from that extreme individualization characteristic of the islands of Polynesia.
Europe lies between these extremes. Limited in area, diversified in surface, and deeply indented in its coast-line, it has experienced all the advantages which a continent needs for its development, and for that historical greatness which Europe has won for itself. Less striking in natural scenery and comparatively poor in resources, its contrasts in respect mainly to the action of its inland seas and rivers over the main land have conduced to the happiest results. It has become the school for the Old and the New World, taking the vitality and the crude gifts of Asia and turning them into channels where they could issue in new forms for the advancement and the humanizing of the race.
The Results of the above Considerations briefly stated.
It will be seen, from what has now been said, that, with an area three times less than that of Africa, Europe (including its adjacent islands) has a coast-line twice as extended. Without the islands, it is 25,380 miles in length, or the circumference of the earth. The coast-line of Africa extends 17,860 miles; that of Asia 32,900.