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Page 79
"A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago:
A Narrative of Travel and Exploration from 1878 to 1883."
By Henry O. Forbes, F.R.G.S.
New York: Harper & Brothers.
Although a long succession of naturalists have done their best to
familiarize readers with the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, Mr.
Forbes's book is full not only of freshly-adjusted and classified facts,
but of curious and valuable details of his own discoveries. Even the
best-known islands of the group are so inexhaustible in every form of
animal and vegetable life that much remains for the patient gleaner
after Darwin and Wallace, who found here some of the most striking
illustrations of their deductions and theories, It is well known that
startling contrasts in the distribution of plants and animals are met
with in these islands, even when they lie side by side; and in no other
part of the world is the history of mutations of climate, of the law of
migrations, and of the changes of sea and land, so open and palpable to
the scientific observer. Mr. Forbes's object seems to have been to visit
those islands which offer the most striking deviations from the more
general type. His earlier explorations were made alone, but during the
last eighteen months he was accompanied by a brave woman who came out
from England to Batavia to be married to him at the close of 1881. It is
painful to read of the deadly ordeals of climate and the excessive
discomforts and privations to which this lady was exposed. Her diary,
kept at Dilly during her husband's absence, while she was ill, utterly
deserted, and in danger of a lonely and agonizing death, makes a
singular contrast to the record of Miss Bird and others of her sex who
seem to have triumphed over all the vicissitudes possible to women. To
the general reader Mr. Forbes's travels in Java, Sumatra, and the
Keeling Islands are far more satisfactory than in those less familiar,
like Timor and Buru. In the light of the terrible events of 1883,
everything connected with the islands lying on either side of the
Straits of Sunda is of the highest interest. Those appalling disasters
which swept away part of Sumatra and Java and altered the configuration
of the whole volcanic group surrounding Krakatoa took place only a few
weeks after Mr. and Mrs. Forbes sailed for home. This widespread
destruction seemed to the inhabitants the culmination of a series of
calamitous years of drought, wet, blight, bovine pestilence, and fever.
It was Mr. Forbes's fortune to be in Java during these bad seasons,
which, from combined causes, made it impossible for flowers to perfect
themselves and fructify. This circumstance was, however, useful to the
naturalist, offering him an opportunity for experiments in the
fertilization of orchids and other plants. The account of the Dutch
cinchona-plantations, which now furnish quinine of the best quality, is
full of interest.
Mr. Forbes's visit to the Cocos-Keeling Islands, in the Indian Ocean,
cannot be passed over. He was eager to visit a coral-reef, and this
atoll, stocked and planted only by the flotsam and jetsam of the seas,
the winds, and migrating birds, offers to the naturalist a most
delightful study; for here, progressing almost under his eyes, are the
phenomena which have made Bermuda and other coral groups. Little as the
Keeling Islands seem to offer in the way of secure habitation, they have
a population of some hundreds of people, presided over by their
energetic proprietor, Mr. Ross, who has planted the atoll thickly with
cocoanut palms. Gathering the nuts and expressing the oil is the chief
industry of the inhabitants, who are all taught to work and support
themselves in some useful way. No money is in circulation on the island:
a system of exchange and barter with agents in Batavia for necessary
products takes its place. This thriving little community has, however,
terrible forces to contend against. Darwin recounts the effects of an
earthquake which took place two years before his visit to the islands in
1836; a fierce cyclone brought ruin and devastation in 1862; and in 1876
a terrible experience of cyclone and earthquake almost swept away the
whole settlement. This was followed by a most singular phenomenon.
"About thirty-six hours after the cyclone," writes Mr. Forbes, "the
water on the eastern side of the lagoon was observed to be rising up
from below of a dark color. The color was of an inky hue, and its smell
'like that of rotten eggs.' ... Within twenty-four hours every fish,
coral, and mollusc in the part impregnated with this discoloring
substance--probably hydrosulphuric or carbonic acid died. So great was
the number of fish thrown on the beach, that it took three weeks of hard
work to bury them in a vast trench dug in the sand." Wherever this water
touched the growing coral-reef, it was blighted and killed. Darwin saw
similar "patches" of dead coral, and attributed them to some great fall
of the tide which had left the insects exposed to the light of the sun.
But it is probable that a similar submarine eruption had taken place
after the earthquake which preceded his visit to the Keeling Islands in
1836.
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