It is, perhaps, in consequence of these names having embraced the whole, or at least several of the islands collectively, that the accounts given by Marco Polo, and other early European voyagers, of particular islands, as Java Major and Java Minor, are so inconsistent with one another. The country described by Marco Polo as Java Minor, seems, beyond doubt, to have been the eastern coast of Sumatra; but that expression, "or Little Java," is now applied exclusively to _Báli_, as "Great Java" is to the island we are now describing. It is on the latter only, if we except what has been observed of the names given to the Archipelago generally by the natives of Celebes, that the islanders themselves apply the name of _Jawa_, in any of its forms, to their own country. It has there even a still more confined application, being generally limited to the eastern districts of the island, which may be considered as Java proper, in contra-distinction to the western districts, which are for the most part inhabited by a people called _Súnda_, from whom the Straits and Isles of Sunda have been named by Europeans. Whether Sumatra, Java, or any other island of the Archipelago, or the whole or several of them collectively, may not have formed the _Taprobane_ of the ancients, is perhaps still an undecided question, notwithstanding the claims to this distinction which have of late years been rather admitted than proved in favour of Ceylon. The most striking fact detailed in the accounts which have reached us of this ancient country, and one which, from its nature, is least likely to have been disfigured or perverted by the misrepresentations or prejudices of travellers, is, that it was bisected in nearly equal portions by the equinoctial line, and that to the southward of it the polar star was not visible. How can this statement be evaded, or in any way applied to Ceylon? Major Wilford seems inclined to consider _Taprobane_ as derived from the Sanscrit words _tapa_ (penance) and _vana_ (forest or grove), a derivation equally favorable to the claims of the Javans, _tapa_ and _wana_, or _wono_, having the like signification in their language; and if, as there is reason to believe, an extensive intercourse subsisted in very remote times between Western India and these islands, where was there a country that could more invite the retreat of holy men, than the evergreen islands which rise in endless clusters on the smooth seas of the Malayan Archipelago, where the elevation and tranquillity of devotion are fostered by all that is majestic and lovely in nature?