The Malay Archipelago, Volume 2 _ The Land - Alfred Russel Wallace

(Perpustakaan Sri Jauhari) #1

all weathers. The land rises gradually to a moderate height, and numerous small
streams descend on all sides. The mere existence of these streams would prove
that the island was not entirely coralline, as in that case all the water would sink
through the porous rock as it does at Manowolko and Matabello; but we have
more positive proof in the pebbles and stones of their beds, which exhibit a
variety of stratified crystalline rocks. About a hundred yards from the beach rises
a wall of coral rock, ten or twenty feet high, above which is an undulating
surface of rugged coral, which slopes downward towards the interior, and then
after a slight ascent is bounded by a second wall of coral. Similar walls occur
higher up, and coral is found on the highest part of the island.


This peculiar structure teaches us that before the coral was formed land
existed in this spot; that this land sunk gradually beneath the waters, but with
intervals of rest, during which encircling reef's were formed around it at different
elevations; that it then rose to above its present elevation, and is now again
sinking. We infer this, because encircling reefs are a proof of subsidence; and if
the island were again elevated about a hundred feet, what is now the reef and the
shallow sea within it would form a wall of coral rock, and an undulating
coralline plain, exactly similar to those that still exist at various altitudes up to
the summit of the island. We learn also that these changes have taken place at a
comparatively recent epoch, for the surface of the coral has scarcely suffered
from the action of the weather, and hundreds of sea-shells, exactly resembling
those still found upon the beach, and many of them retaining their gloss and
even their colour, are scattered over the surface of the island to near its summit.


Whether the Goram group formed originally part of New Guinea or of Ceram
it is scarcely possible to determine, and its productions will throw little light
upon the question, if, as I suppose, the islands have been entirely submerged
within the epoch of existing species of animals, as in that case it must owe its
present fauna and flora to recent immigration from surrounding lands; and with
this view its poverty in species very well agrees. It possesses much in common
with East Ceram, but at the same time has a good deal of resemblance to the Ke
Islands and Banda. The fine pigeon, Carpophaga concinna, inhabits Ke, Banda,
Il-Iatabello, and Goram, and is replaced by a distinct species, C. neglecta, in
Ceram. The insects of these four islands have also a common facies—facts
which seem to indicate that some more extensive land has recently disappeared
from the area they now occupy, and has supplied them with a few of its peculiar
productions.


The Goram people (among whom I stayed a month) are a race of traders.
Every year they visit the Tenimber, Ke, and Aru Islands, the whole north-west

Free download pdf