Page 8 - Malaysia by John Russel Denyes

No man lives unto himself. Every man, no
matter how isolated, is related by the ties of
giving and receiving with every other man.

What is this The Malay Archipelago lies
Malaysia like? wholly within the tropics. The
equator runs seventy miles south
of Singapore and through the middle of Sumatra,
Borneo, and Celebes. Java and New Guinea lie
to the south of the equator.
On the plains the thermometer stands at about
ninety degrees in the shade the year round. But
the nights are always cool enough to be comfort-
able. In the mountains the temperature is more
moderate. The average rainfall is about one
hundred and fifty inches a year. This makes the
climate very humid and less tolerable than a dry
climate with the same degree of heat. Shoes put
away in a closet for two days are covered with
green mould.

Size If the map of Malaysia were placed upon
that of the United States it would form a
great crescent reaching from Minneapolis in the
north to New Orleans in the south, and from
Seattle clear across the continent and a thousand
miles out into the Atlantic ocean.
The islands are all that is left of a' great con-
tinent which once included the Philippines and
Australia. At some prehistoric day this continent
sank beneath the ocean, leaving only the high
plateaus and mountain peaks. All over these
islands are mountains, more than a hundred of
them being still active volcanoes. Earthquakes
are frequent. In 1883 the eruption of Mount
Karakatoa threw our four cubic miles of rocks
and lava forming a column of smoke and ashes
twenty-one miles high. Thirty thousand people
lost their lives. The highest mountain peaks are
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