This rampart is pierced by
several sally-ports for the convenience of ships and whales;
conspicuous among which are the straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the
straits of Sunda, chiefly, vessels bound to China from the west,
emerge into the China seas.
Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing
midway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold green
promontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little
correspond to the central gateway opening into some vast walled
empire: and considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and
silks, and jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand
islands of that oriental sea are enriched, it seems a significant
provision of nature, that such treasures, by the very formation of
the land, should at least bear the appearance, however ineffectual,
of being guarded from the all-grasping western world. The shores of
the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those domineering fortresses
which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the
Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the
obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession of
ships before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day,
have passed between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with
the costliest cargoes of the east.
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