ly shift their
position, so that a country may be covered with a more or less irregular
series of hills in chains and masses, only here and there rising into
lofty cones, and yet the whole may be produced by true volcanic action.
In this manner the greater part of Java has been formed. There has been
some elevation, especially on the south coast, where extensive cliffs
of coral limestone are found; and there may be a substratum of older
stratified rocks; but still essentially Java is volcanic, and that noble
and fertile island--the very garden of the East, and perhaps upon the
whole the richest, the best cultivated, and the best governed tropical
island in the world--owes its very existence to the same intense
volcanic activity which still occasionally devastates its surface.

The great island of Sumatra exhibits, in proportion to its extent, a
much smaller number of volcanoes, and a considerable portion of it has
probably a non-volcanic origin.

To the eastward, the long string of islands from Java, passing by the
north of Timor and away to Panda, are probably all due to volcanic
action. Timor itself consists of ancient stratified rocks, but is said
to have one volcano near its centre.

Going northward, Amboyna, a part of Bouru, and the west end of Ceram,
the north part of Gilolo, and all the small islands around it, the
northern extremity of Celebes, and the islands of Sian and Sang-air,
are wholly volcanic. The Philippine Archipelago contains many active
and extinct volcanoes, and has probably been reduced to its present
fragmentary condition by subsidences attending on volcanic action.

All along this great line of volcanoes are to be found more or less
palpable signs of upheaval and depression of land. The range of islands
south of Sumatra, a part of the south coast of Java and of the islands
east of it, the west and east end of Timor, portions of all the
Moluccas, the Ke and Aru Islands, Waigiou, and the whole south and east
of Gilolo, consist in a great measure of upraised coral-rock, exactly
corresponding to that now forming in the adjacent seas. In many places
I have observed the unaltered surfaces of the elevated reefs, with great
masses of coral standing up in their natural position, and hundreds of
shells so fresh-looking that it was hard to believe that they had
been more than a few years out of the water; and, in fact, it is very
probable that such changes have occurred within a few centuries.

The un