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Updated: September 15, 2025
And so Starbuck found Ahab with a general chart of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him; and another separate one representing the long eastern coasts of the Japanese islands Niphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke.
Forgotten was the wraith of Leung Kai Chu, the jungle trail of Hallman, and even the trepidation with which we had awaited the sailing ship's boat. I was soon to be in those enchanted archipelagoes, and to see for myself those mighty swimmers and those sleepers upon the sea. I might even get a letter through that floating postmaster. There was a Continental duchess aboard, whom I pitied.
The same waves wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans.
The last region in which territories remained available for European annexation consisted of the innumerable archipelagoes of the Pacific Ocean. Here the preponderant influence had been in the hands of Britain ever since the days of Captain Cook.
The coloured map appended to my volume on Coral Reefs, led me to conclude that the great oceans are still mainly areas of subsidence, the great archipelagoes still areas of oscillations of level, and the continents areas of elevation. But we have no reason to assume that things have thus remained from the beginning of the world.
Thomas's, and the Virgin Gordas to the south, would still be parted from them by a gulf nearly two thousand fathoms deep a gulf which marks still, probably, the separation of two ancient continents, or at least two archipelagoes. Much light has been thrown on this curious problem since our return, by an American naturalist, Mr.
But was it frequented, at least occasionally, by the natives of neighboring islands? It was difficult to reply to this question. No land appeared within a radius of fifty miles. But fifty miles could be easily crossed, either by Malay proas or by the large Polynesian canoes. Everything depended on the position of the island, of its isolation in the Pacific, or of its proximity to archipelagoes.
Here I created a maritime empire islands, a seaboard with harbours, light-houses, fortifications. My geographical imitativeness had its full swing. Sometimes, while I was creating, a cart would be driven roughly into the pond, and a horse would drink deep of my ocean, his hooves trampling my archipelagoes and shattering my ports with what was worse than a typhoon.
Many of his scenes were laid in the East, and among those seldom-visited archipelagoes of the Indian Ocean, so that there was an Oriental fragrance breathing through his talk and an odor of the Spice Islands still lingering in his garments.
The islands, moreover, of some of the small volcanic groups which thus border continents, are placed in lines, related to those along which the adjoining shores of the continents trend; I may instance the lines of intersection at the Galapagos, and at the Cape de Verde Archipelagoes, and the best marked line of the Canary Islands.
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