Note 803 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

The characteristics which mark peninsulas, namely, ample contact with the sea, small area as compared with that of the continents, peripheral location, more or less complete isolation, combined, however, with the function of bridge or passway to yet remoter lands, are all accentuated in islands. A list of the chief peninsulas of the world, as compared with the greatest islands, shows a far larger scale of areas for the former, even if the latter be made to include the vast ice-capped land-mass of Greenland (2,170,000 square kilometers or 846,000 square miles). New Guinea, the largest habitable island, has only one-fourth the area of Arabia, the largest of the peninsulas.803 Therefore, both the advantages and disadvantages incident to a restricted area may be expected to appear in an intensified degree in islands.