Note 62 — Chapter V

An admirable description of the Island of Timor is given by Dampier, much of which might be applicable to this region at the present day. This large island (some 12,500 square miles in area, 300 miles long, and an average 40 miles broad) lies, as he remarks, nearly north-east and south-west, and consequently somewhat out of the general direction of the other Sunda Islands in the long string between Java on the west and Wetar on the east. Of all the islands of the Malay Archipelago (except the New Guinea group) it is the one which approaches nearest to the Australian continent. On its southern side are tremendously high mountains rising to a culminating altitude of more than 12,000 feet close to the seashore. But a great deal of the actual coastline is obstructed for the access of mariners, especially on the south, by an obstinate fringe of mangroves. The mangrove is a tree which grows out of the mud and shallow sea water, supporting itself by innumerable roots. It is practically impossible for anyone to make their way by land through the mangrove swamps. Beyond the mangroves, before the land rises into mountains, is a stretch of sandy country sparsely clothed with a tree which Dampier describes as a pine, which was more probably the Casuarina. The mountains form an almost continuous chain running through the middle of Timor from one extremity to the other, without outlying mountains of great height in the southern districts. The indigenous inhabitants of Timor are mainly of Papuan or Negroid stock, with a considerable intermixture of Mongolian Malay. As in Dampier's time, so at the present day, the island was practically divided between the Portuguese and the Dutch. What first drew the attention of Portuguese navigators to this out-of-the-way island of the Malay Archipelago is not known to us. They found their way to Timor in 1520, being followed soon afterwards by the ships of Magellan's expedition. The Portuguese have stuck to Timor through all the changing circumstances of their history, even after the Dutch had turned them out of all the other Malay islands. They now are admitted by Holland and the rest of Europe to be the rulers over nearly two-thirds of the island.