Mr. Roscoe - "The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast"

G. A. Henty - "With Buller in Natal"

Miriam Gaines - "Grandfather's Love Pie"

Henry Seton Merriman - "Dross"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Malay Archipelago Volume 1

b >> by Alfred Russell Wallace >> The Malay Archipelago Volume 1




Contrasts in Depth of Sea.--It was first pointed out by Mr.
George Windsor Earl, in a paper read before the Royal
Geographical Society in 1845, and subsequently in a pamphlet "On
the Physical Geography of South-Eastern Asia and Australia",
dated 1855, that a shallow sea connected the great islands of
Sumatra, Java, and Borneo with the Asiatic continent, with which
their natural productions generally agreed; while a similar
shallow sea connected New Guinea and some of the adjacent islands
to Australia, all being characterised by the presence of
marsupials.

We have here a clue to the most radical contrast in the
Archipelago, and by following it out in detail I have arrived at
the conclusion that we can draw a line among the islands, which
shall so divide them that one-half shall truly belong to Asia,
while the other shall no less certainly be allied to Australia. I
term these respectively the Indo-Malayan and the Austro-Malayan
divisions of the Archipelago.

On referring to pages 12, 13, and 36 of Mr. Earl's pamphlet, it
will be seen that he maintains the former connection of Asia and
Australia as an important part of his view; whereas, I dwell
mainly on their long continued separation. Notwithstanding this
and other important differences between us, to him undoubtedly
belongs the merit of first indicating the division of the
Archipelago into an Australian and an Asiatic region, which it
has been my good fortune to establish by more detailed
observations.

Contrasts in Natural Productions.--To understand the importance
of this class of facts, and its bearing upon the former
distribution of land and sea, it is necessary to consider the
results arrived at by geologists and naturalists in other parts
of the world.

It is now generally admitted that the present distribution of
living things on the surface of the earth is mainly the result of
the last series of changes that it has undergone. Geology teaches
us that the surface of the land, and the distribution of land and
water, is everywhere slowly changing. It further teaches us that
the forms of life which inhabit that surface have, during every
period of which we possess any record, been also slowly changing.

It is not now necessary to say anything about how either of those
changes took place; as to that, opinions may differ; but as to
the fact that the changes themselves have occurred, from the
earliest geological ages down to the present day, and are still
going on, there is no difference of opinion. Every successive
stratum of sedimentary rock, sand, or gravel, is a proof that
changes of level have taken place; and the different species of
animals and plants, whose remains are found in these deposits,
prove that corresponding changes did occur in the organic world.

Taking, therefore, these two series of changes for granted, most
of the present peculiarities and anomalies in the distribution of
species may be directly traced to them. In our own islands, with
a very few trifling exceptions, every quadruped, bird, reptile,
insect, and plant, is found also on the adjacent continent. In
the small islands of Sardinia and Corsica, there are some
quadrupeds and insects, and many plants, quite peculiar. In
Ceylon, more closely connected to India than Britain is to
Europe, many animals and plants are different from those found in
India, and peculiar to the island. In the Galapagos Islands,
almost every indigenous living thing is peculiar to them, though
closely resembling other kinds found in the nearest parts of the
American continent.

Most naturalists now admit that these facts can only be explained
by the greater or less lapse of time since the islands were
upraised from beneath the ocean, or were separated from the
nearest land; and this will be generally (though not always)
indicated by the depth of the intervening sea. The enormous
thickness of many marine deposits through wide areas shows that
subsidence has often continued (with intermitting periods of
repose) during epochs of immense duration. The depth of sea
produced by such subsidence will therefore generally be a measure
of time; and in like manner, the change which organic forms have
undergone is a measure of time. When we make proper allowance for
the continued introduction of new animals and plants from
surrounding countries by those natural means of dispersal which
have been so well explained by Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Darwin,
it is remarkable how closely these two measures correspond.
Britain is separated from the continent by a very shallow sea,
and only in a very few cases have our animals or plants begun to
show a difference from the corresponding continental species.
Corsica and Sardinia, divided from Italy by a much deeper sea,
present a much greater difference in their organic forms. Cuba,
separated from Yucatan by a wider and deeper strait, differs more
markedly, so that most of its productions are of distinct and
peculiar species; while Madagascar, divided from Africa by a deep
channel three hundred miles wide, possesses so many peculiar
features as to indicate separation at a very remote antiquity, or
even to render it doubtful whether the two countries have ever
been absolutely united.

Returning now to the Malay Archipelago, we find that all the wide
expanse of sea which divides Java, Sumatra, and Borneo from each
other, and from Malacca and Siam, is so shallow that ships can
anchor in any part of it, since it rarely exceeds forty fathoms
in depth; and if we go as far as the line of a hundred fathoms,
we shall include the Philippine Islands and Bali, east of Java.
If, therefore, these islands have been separated from each other
and the continent by subsidence of the intervening tracts of
land, we should conclude that the separation has been
comparatively recent, since the depth to which the land has
subsided is so small. It is also to be remarked that the great
chain of active volcanoes in Sumatra and Java furnishes us with a
sufficient cause for such subsidence, since the enormous masses
of matter they have thrown out would take away the foundations of
the surrounding district; and this may be the true explanation of
the often-noticed fact that volcanoes and volcanic chains are
always near the sea. The subsidence they produce around them
will, in time, make a sea, if one does not already exist.

But, it is when we examine the zoology of these countries that we
find what we most require--evidence of a very striking character
that these great islands must have once formed a part of the
continent, and could only have been separated at a very recent
geological epoch. The elephant and tapir of Sumatra and Borneo,
the rhinoceros of Sumatra and the allied species of Java, the
wild cattle of Borneo and the kind long supposed to be peculiar
to Java, are now all known to inhabit some part or other of
Southern Asia. None of these large animals could possibly have
passed over the arms of the sea which now separate these
countries, and their presence plainly indicates that a land
communication must have existed since the origin of the species.
Among the smaller mammals, a considerable portion are common to
each island and the continent; but the vast physical changes that
must have occurred during the breaking up and subsidence of such
extensive regions have led to the extinction of some in one or
more of the islands, and in some cases there seems also to have
been time for a change of species to have taken place. Birds and
insects illustrate the same view, for every family and almost
every genus of these groups found in any of the islands occurs
also on the Asiatic continent, and in a great number of cases the
species are exactly identical. Birds offer us one of the best
means of determining the law of distribution; for though at first
sight it would appear that the watery boundaries which keep out
the land quadrupeds could be easily passed over by birds, yet
practically it is not so; for if we leave out the aquatic tribes
which are preeminently wanderers, it is found that the others
(and especially the Passeres, or true perching-birds, which form
the vast majority) are generally as strictly limited by straits
and arms of the sea as are quadrupeds themselves. As an instance,
among the islands of which I am now speaking, it is a remarkable
fact that Java possesses numerous birds which never pass over to
Sumatra, though they are separated by a strait only fifteen miles
wide, and with islands in mid-channel. Java, in fact, possesses
more birds and insects peculiar to itself than either Sumatra or
Borneo, and this would indicate that it was earliest separated
from the continent; next in organic individuality is Borneo,
while Sumatra is so nearly identical in all its animal forms with
the peninsula of Malacca, that we may safely conclude it to have
been the most recently dismembered island.

The general result therefore, at which we arrive, is that the
great islands of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo resemble in their
natural productions the adjacent parts of the continent, almost
as much as such widely-separated districts could be expected to
do even if they still formed a part of Asia; and this close
resemblance, joined with the fact of the wide extent of sea which
separates them being so uniformly and remarkably shallow, and
lastly, the existence of the extensive range of volcanoes in
Sumatra and Java, which have poured out vast quantities of
subterranean matter and have built up extensive plateaux and
lofty mountain ranges, thus furnishing a vera causa for a
parallel line of subsidence--all lead irresistibly to the
conclusion that at a very recent geological epoch, the continent
of Asia extended far beyond its present limits in a south-
easterly direction, including the islands of Java, Sumatra, and
Borneo, and probably reaching as far as the present 100-fathom
line of soundings.

The Philippine Islands agree in many respects with Asia and the
other islands, but present some anomalies, which seem to indicate
that they were separated at an earlier period, and have since
been subject to many revolutions in their physical geography.

Turning our attention now to the remaining portion of the
Archipelago, we shall find that all the islands from Celebes and
Lombock eastward exhibit almost as close a resemblance to
Australia and New Guinea as the Western Islands do to Asia. It is
well known that the natural productions of Australia differ from
those of Asia more than those of any of the four ancient quarters
of the world differ from each other. Australia, in fact, stands
alone: it possesses no apes or monkeys, no cats or tigers,
wolves, bears, or hyenas; no deer or antelopes, sheep or oxen; no
elephant, horse, squirrel, or rabbit; none, in short, of those
familiar types of quadruped which are met with in every other
part of the world. Instead of these, it has Marsupials only:
kangaroos and opossums; wombats and the duckbilled Platypus. In
birds it is almost as peculiar. It has no woodpeckers and no
pheasants--families which exist in every other part of the
world; but instead of them it has the mound-making brush-turkeys,
the honeysuckers, the cockatoos, and the brush-tongued lories,
which are found nowhere else upon the globe. All these striking
peculiarities are found also in those islands which form the
Austro-Malayan division of the Archipelago.

The great contrast between the two divisions of the Archipelago
is nowhere so abruptly exhibited as on passing from the island of
Bali to that of Lombock, where the two regions are in closest
proximity. In Bali we have barbets, fruit-thrushes, and
woodpeckers; on passing over to Lombock these are seen no more,
but we have abundance of cockatoos, honeysuckers, and brush-
turkeys, which are equally unknown in Bali, or any island further
west. [I was informed, however, that there were a few cockatoos
at one spot on the west of Bali, showing that the intermingling
of the productions of these islands is now going on.] The strait
is here fifteen miles wide, so that we may pass in two hours from
one great division of the earth to another, differing as
essentially in their animal life as Europe does from America. If
we travel from Java or Borneo to Celebes or the Moluccas, the
difference is still more striking. In the first, the forests
abound in monkeys of many kinds, wild cats, deer, civets, and
otters, and numerous varieties of squirrels are constantly met
with. In the latter none of these occur; but the prehensile-
tailed Cuscus is almost the only terrestrial mammal seen, except
wild pigs, which are found in all the islands, and deer (which
have probably been recently introduced) in Celebes and the
Moluccas. The birds which are most abundant in the Western
Islands are woodpeckers, barbets, trogons, fruit-thrushes, and
leaf-thrushes; they are seen daily, and form the great
ornithological features of the country. In the Eastern Islands
these are absolutely unknown, honeysuckers and small lories being
the most common birds, so that the naturalist feels himself in a
new world, and can hardly realize that he has passed from the one
region to the other in a few days, without ever being out of
sight of land.

The inference that we must draw from these facts is, undoubtedly,
that the whole of the islands eastwards beyond Java and Borneo do
essentially form a part of a former Australian or Pacific
continent, although some of them may never have been actually
joined to it. This continent must have been broken up not only
before the Western Islands were separated from Asia, but probably
before the extreme southeastern portion of Asia was raised above
the waters of the ocean; for a great part of the land of Borneo
and Java is known to be geologically of quite recent formation,
while the very great difference of species, and in many cases of
genera also, between the productions of the Eastern Malay Islands
and Australia, as well as the great depth of the sea now
separating them, all point to a comparatively long period of
isolation.

It is interesting to observe among the islands themselves how a
shallow sea always intimates a recent land connexion. The Aru
Islands, Mysol, and Waigiou, as well as Jobie, agree with New
Guinea in their species of mammalia and birds much more closely
than they do with the Moluccas, and we find that they are all
united to New Guinea by a shallow sea. In fact, the 100-fathom
line round New Guinea marks out accurately the range of the true
Paradise birds.

It is further to be noted--and this is a very interesting point
in connection with theories of the dependence of special forms of
life on external conditions--that this division of the
Archipelago into two regions characterised by a striking
diversity in their natural productions does not in any way
correspond to the main physical or climatal divisions of the
surface. The great volcanic chain runs through both parts, and
appears to produce no effect in assimilating their productions.
Borneo closely resembles New Guinea not only in its vast size and
its freedom from volcanoes, but in its variety of geological
structure, its uniformity of climate, and the general aspect of
the forest vegetation that clothes its surface. The Moluccas are
the counterpart of the Philippines in their volcanic structure,
their extreme fertility, their luxuriant forests, and their
frequent earthquakes; and Bali with the east end of Java has a
climate almost as dry and a soil almost as arid as that of Timor.
Yet between these corresponding groups of islands, constructed as
it were after the same pattern, subjected to the same climate,
and bathed by the same oceans, there exists the greatest possible
contrast when we compare their animal productions. Nowhere does
the ancient doctrine--that differences or similarities in the
various forms of life that inhabit different countries are due to
corresponding physical differences or similarities in the
countries themselves--meet with so direct and palpable a
contradiction. Borneo and New Guinea, as alike physically as two
distinct countries can be, are zoologically wide as the poles
asunder; while Australia, with its dry winds, its open plains,
its stony deserts, and its temperate climate, yet produces birds
and quadrupeds which are closely related to those inhabiting the
hot damp luxuriant forests, which everywhere clothe the plains
and mountains of New Guinea.

In order to illustrate more clearly the means by which I suppose
this great contrast has been brought about, let us consider what
would occur if two strongly contrasted divisions of the earth
were, by natural means, brought into proximity. No two parts of
the world differ so radically in their productions as Asia and
Australia, but the difference between Africa and South America is
also very great, and these two regions will well serve to
illustrate the question we are considering. On the one side we
have baboons, lions, elephants, buffaloes, and giraffes; on the
other spider-monkeys, pumas, tapirs, anteaters, and sloths; while
among birds, the hornbills, turacos, orioles, and honeysuckers of
Africa contrast strongly with the toucans, macaws, chatterers,
and hummingbirds of America.

Now let us endeavour to imagine (what it is very probable may
occur in future ages) that a slow upheaval of the bed of the
Atlantic should take place, while at the same time earthquake-
shocks and volcanic action on the land should cause increased
volumes of sediment to be poured down by the rivers, so that the
two continents should gradually spread out by the addition of
newly-formed lands, and thus reduce the Atlantic which now
separates them, to an arm of the sea a few hundred miles wide. At
the same time we may suppose islands to be upheaved in mid-
channel; and, as the subterranean forces varied in intensity, and
shifted their points of greatest action, these islands would
sometimes become connected with the land on one side or other of
the strait, and at other times again be separated from it.
Several islands would at one time be joined together, at another
would be broken up again, until at last, after many long ages of
such intermittent action, we might have an irregular archipelago
of islands filling up the ocean channel of the Atlantic, in whose
appearance and arrangement we could discover nothing to tell us
which had been connected with Africa and which with America. The
animals and plants inhabiting these islands would, however,
certainly reveal this portion of their former history. On those
islands which had ever formed a part of the South American
continent, we should be sure to find such common birds as
chatterers and toucans and hummingbirds, and some of the peculiar
American quadrupeds; while on those which had been separated from
Africa, hornbills, orioles, and honeysuckers would as certainly
be found. Some portion of the upraised land might at different
times have had a temporary connection with both continents, and
would then contain a certain amount of mixture in its living
inhabitants. Such seems to have been the case with the islands of
Celebes and the Philippines. Other islands, again, though in such
close proximity as Bali and Lombock, might each exhibit an almost
unmixed sample of the productions of the continents of which they
had directly or indirectly once formed a part.

In the Malay Archipelago we have, I believe, a case exactly
parallel to that which I have here supposed. We have indications
of a vast continent, with a peculiar fauna and flora having been
gradually and irregularly broken up; the island of Celebes
probably marking its furthest westward extension, beyond which
was a wide ocean. At the same time Asia appears to have been
extending its limits in a southeast direction, first in an
unbroken mass, then separated into islands as we now see it, and
almost coming into actual contact with the scattered fragments of
the great southern land.

From this outline of the subject, it will be evident how
important an adjunct Natural History is to Geology; not only in
interpreting the fragments of extinct animals found in the
earth's crust, but in determining past changes in the surface
which have left no geological record. It is certainly a wonderful
and unexpected fact that an accurate knowledge of the
distribution of birds and insects should enable us to map out
lands and continents which disappeared beneath the ocean long
before the earliest traditions of the human race. Wherever the
geologist can explore the earth's surface, he can read much of
its past history, and can determine approximately its latest
movements above and below the sea-level; but wherever oceans and
seas now extend, he can do nothing but speculate on the very
limited data afforded by the depth of the waters. Here the
naturalist steps in, and enables him to fill up this great gap in
the past history of the earth.

One of the chief objects of my travels was to obtain evidence of
this nature; and my search after such evidence has been rewarded
by great success, so that I have been able to trace out with some
probability the past changes which one of the most interesting
parts of the earth has undergone. It may be thought that the
facts and generalizations here given would have been more
appropriately placed at the end rather than at the beginning of a
narrative of the travels which supplied the facts. In some cases
this might be so, but I have found it impossible to give such an
account as I desire of the natural history of the numerous
islands and groups of islands in the Archipelago, without
constant reference to these generalizations which add so much to
their interest. Having given this general sketch of the subject,
I shall be able to show how the same principles can be applied to
the individual islands of a group, as to the whole Archipelago;
and thereby make my account of the many new and curious animals
which inhabit them both, more interesting and more instructive
than if treated as mere isolated facts.

Contrasts of Races.--Before I had arrived at the conviction that
the eastern and western halves of the Archipelago belonged to
distinct primary regions of the earth, I had been led to group
the natives of the Archipelago under two radically distinct
races. In this I differed from most ethnologists who had before
written on the subject; for it had been the almost universal
custom to follow William von Humboldt and Pritchard, in classing
all the Oceanic races as modifications of one type. Observation
soon showed me, however, that Malays and Papuans differed
radically in every physical, mental, and moral character; and
more detailed research, continued for eight years, satisfied me
that under these two forms, as types, the whole of the peoples of
the Malay Archipelago and Polynesia could be classified. On
drawing the line which separates these races, it is found to come
near to that which divides the zoological regions, but somewhat
eastward of it; a circumstance which appears to me very
significant of the same causes having influenced the distribution
of mankind that have determined the range of other animal forms.

The reason why exactly the same line does not limit both is
sufficiently intelligible. Man has means of traversing the sea
which animals do not possess; and a superior race has power to
press out or assimilate an inferior one. The maritime enterprise
and higher civilization of the Malay races have enabled them to
overrun a portion of the adjacent region, in which they have
entirely supplanted the indigenous inhabitants if it ever
possessed any; and to spread much of their language, their
domestic animals, and their customs far over the Pacific, into
islands where they have but slightly, or not at all, modified the
physical or moral characteristics of the people.

I believe, therefore, that all the peoples of the various islands
can be grouped either with the Malays or the Papuans; and that
these two have no traceable affinity to each other. I believe,
further, that all the races east of the line I have drawn have
more affinity for each other than they have for any of the races
west of that line; that, in fact, the Asiatic races include the
Malays, and all have a continental origin, while the Pacific
races, including all to the east of the former (except perhaps
some in the Northern Pacific), are derived, not from any existing
continent, but from lands which now exist or have recently
existed in the Pacific Ocean. These preliminary observations will
enable the reader better to apprehend the importance I attach to
the details of physical form or moral character, which I shall
give in describing the inhabitants of many of the islands.

CHAPTER II.

SINGAPORE.

(A SKETCH OF THE TOWN AND ISLAND AS SEEN DURING SEVERAL VISITS
FROM 1854 TO 1862.)

FEW places are more interesting to a traveller from Europe than
the town and island of Singapore, furnishing, as it does,
examples of a variety of Eastern races, and of many different
religions and modes of life. The government, the garrison, and
the chief merchants are English; but the great mass of the
population is Chinese, including some of the wealthiest
merchants, the agriculturists of the interior, and most of the
mechanics and labourers. The native Malays are usually fishermen
and boatmen, and they form the main body of the police. The
Portuguese of Malacca supply a large number of the clerks and
smaller merchants. The Klings of Western India are a numerous
body of Mahometans, and, with many Arabs, are petty merchants and
shopkeepers. The grooms and washermen are all Bengalees, and
there is a small but highly respectable class of Parsee
merchants. Besides these, there are numbers of Javanese sailors
and domestic servants, as well as traders from Celebes, Bali, and
many other islands of the Archipelago. The harbour is crowded
with men-of-war and trading vessels of many European nations, and
hundreds of Malay praus and Chinese junks, from vessels of
several hundred tons burthen down to little fishing boats and
passenger sampans; and the town comprises handsome public
buildings and churches, Mahometan mosques, Hindu temples, Chinese
joss-houses, good European houses, massive warehouses, queer old
Kling and China bazaars, and long suburbs of Chinese and Malay
cottages.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.