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Updated: June 24, 2025
It is, at the same time, well ventilated by both monsoons; and being near twenty miles from the marshy shores of the Borneo river, there is little ground to apprehend that it will be found unhealthy, even if those shores themselves had been ascertained to be so, which, however, is not the case; for, in proof of their salubrity, it may be stated, that the town of Borneo is healthy, although it stands, and has stood for centuries, on the flooded banks of the river; the houses being built on posts, and chiefly accessible by boat.
And when you have done so you'll acknowledge that there's nothing like iron for shipbuilding. Apropos of seafaring matters, what sort of a voyage do you think we shall have?" The skipper shrugged his shoulders. "Who can tell?" he answered. "Everything depends upon the weather; and what is more fickle than that? outside the limits of the trade-winds and the monsoons, I mean, of course.
That part of the coast of New Holland from Cape York to Cape Van Diemen, and extending as far south as the parallel of 12 degrees south latitude, may be said to be within the limit of the east and west monsoons, as at a short distance from the coast, these periodical winds will be found to blow with great regularity.
For instance, the summer sun, beating on the interior plains of Asia, creates such intense heat in the atmosphere that it is more than sufficient to neutralise the forces which cause the trade-winds to blow. They are, accordingly, arrested and turned back. The great general law of the trades is in this region temporarily suspended, and the monsoons are created.
On the line, however, the trade-winds and monsoons appear very irregularly, because there are four seasons instead of two that is to say, two rainy and two dry and the weather is also subject to frequent changes of a local character, especially in the neighbourhood of mountain-ranges and volcanoes. With the exception of Borneo and the central part of Celebes all these islands are volcanic.
It is thus that the heated plains of Africa and Central America produce the monsoons of the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico. We think it unnecessary to explain minutely the causes that produce variation in the monsoons.
In Borneo, lying as it does upon the equator, the revolution of the year is marked by no very striking changes of weather, temperature, or of vegetation. In fact, the only constant and striking evidences of the passage of the months are the alternations of the north-east and the south-west monsoons.
We found it, however, by no means easy to get along; for so near to the equator the monsoons entirely fail of their regularity, and after passing the southern point of Gilolo we had calms, light puffs of wind, and contrary currents, which kept us for five days in sight of the same islands between it and Poppa.
Civilization emanated from India, but the Asiatic peoples were not able to master the art of navigation in their few seas whose coasts were very far apart and where the monsoons of the Indian Ocean blew six months together in one direction and six months in another. Not until he reached the Mediterranean by overland emigration did the white man wish to become a sailor.
They are not caused by mere temporary storms, but by winds having a constant and regular direction; as the "trades" in the Atlantic and Pacific, the "monsoons" in the Indian Ocean, the "pamperos" of South America, and the "northers" of the Mexican Gulf. There is another cause for these currents, perhaps of more powerful influence than the winds, yet less taken into account.
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