sh, and French influences, which have raised their status of
civilization and therewith the average density of population. This
culminates in English Mauritius, which shows 540 inhabitants to the
square mile, occupied in the production of sugar, molasses, rum,
vanilla, aloes, and copra. In Zanzibar this density is 220 to the square
mile; in Reunion 230; in Mayotte, the Comores and Seychelles, the
average varies from 100 to 145 to the square mile, though Mahe in the
Seychelles group has one town of 20,000 inhabitants.[951]

In the Malay Archipelago, an oceanic climate and tropical location have
combined to stimulate fertility to the greatest extent; but this local
wealth has been exploited in the highest degree in the smaller islands
having relatively the longest coastline and amplest contact with the
sea. The great continent-like areas of Borneo, New Guinea and Sumatra
show a correspondingly sparse population; Java, smaller than the
smallest of these and coated with mud from its fertilizing volcanoes,
supports 587 inhabitants to the square mile; but this exceptional
average is due to rare local productivity. Java's little neighbors to
the east, Bali and Lombok, each with an area of only about 2100 square
miles, have a density respectively of 338 and 195 to the square mile.
This density rises suddenly in small Amboina (area 264 square miles),
the isle of the famous clove monopoly, to 1000,[952] drops in the other
Moluccas, where Papuan influences are strong, even to 20, but rises
again in the pure Malayan Philippines to 69. In the Philippines a
distinct connection is to be traced between the density of population
and smallness of area. The explanation lies in the attraction of the
coast for the sea-faring Malay race, and the mathematical law of
increase of shoreline with decrease of insular area. Since 65 per cent.
of the whole Philippine population inhabits coastal municipalities, it
is not surprising that the 73 islands from ten to a hundred square miles
in area count 127 inhabitants to the square mile, and those of less than
ten square miles, of which there are nearly a thousand, have a density
of 238.[953]

This same insular density, supported by fertility, fisheries and trade,
appears again in the West Indies, and also the contrast in density
between large and small islands down to a certain limit of
diminutiveness. The Greater Antilles increase in density from Cuba
through smaller Haiti and Jamaica down to little