ASIA, the largest of the land divisions of the world, occupies the northern portion of the Eastern Hemisphere in the form of a massive continent, which extends beyond the Arctic circle, and by its southern peninsulas nearly reaches the equator. The origin of its name remains unknown. Europe and Asia constitute but one continent, extending from W. to E., and having the shape of an immense triangle, the angles of which are Spain in the W., the peninsula of the Tchuktchis in the N. E., and that of Malacca in the S. E. The Arctic Ocean in the N., the Pacific in the E., and the Indian Ocean, continued by its narrow gulf, the Red Sea, which nearly reaches the Mediter ranean, inclose the continent of Asia. The area covered by Asia and its islands is 17,255,890 square miles; that is, al most exactly one-third of the land surface of the globe (32 per cent). Geographi cally speaking, Europe is a mere ap pendix to Asia,, and no exact geographi cal delimitation of the two continents is possible.
Peninsulas.—Asia has one mile of coast line for every 337 square miles of its area; that is, three times less than Eu rope; besides one-fifth of its shores is washed by the ice-bound Arctic Ocean (9,900 miles out of 51,000), or by the foggy and icy Sea of Okhotsk. Its pen insulas comprise nearly one-fifth of its surface. Three immense offsets continue the continent of Asia into more tropical latitudes, Arabia, India, and the Indo Chinese peninsula, and some likeness exists between them and the three southern peninsulas of Europe, Spain, Italy, and the Balkan peninsula, sur rounded by its archipelago of hundreds of islands. Asia Minor protrudes be tween the Black Sea and the Mediter ranean as a huge mass of table-land, broken by narrow gulfs in its western parts. In the Pacific are three large peninsulas, Korea, Kamchatka, and that of the Tchuktchis. The flat, ever frozen, uninhabitable peninsulas of the Arctic Ocean„ Taimyr and Yahual, could play no part in the growth of civilization.
Setts and early inhabitants of Asia had no Mediterranean Sea to serve as a highway of communication between the southern peninsulas. The gulfs which separate them, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, are wide open divisions of the Indian Ocean. The Red Sea penetrates between Africa and Arabia; and only now, since it has been brought into communication with the Mediterranean by the Suez Canal, has it become an important channel of traffic.
Asia's true Mediterranean is on the E., where several archipelagoes, like so many chains of islands, mark off from the ocean the southern and eastern China Seas, whose Gulfs of Siam and Tonkin, and, especially, the Yellow Sea, with the Gulf of Pechili, penetrate into the continent. The Sea of Japan has on its W. the inhospitable coasts of northern Manchuria. The Sea of Okhotsk and that of Bering, although possessing fine gulfs (Ghizhiga, Anadyr), have no im portance for the maritime traffic of na tions.
islands of Asia cover an aggregate of no less than 1,023,000 square miles (nearly 6 per cent. of Asia's surface). The coasts of Asia Minor are dotted with islands, of which the Spor ades connect it with Greece. Cyprus was from remote antiquity a center of civilization; so also Ceylon. The Lac cadives and Maldives are mere coral atolls, rising amid the Indian Ocean and sheltering some 200,000 inhabitants. The islands of east Asia are much more im portant. A narrow strip of islands, some large, like Sumatra (177,000 square miles) and Java, others mere reefs, ex tend in a wide semi-circle, under the name of Andaman and Sunda Islands, from Burma to Australia, separating the In dian Ocean from the shallow Java Sea and the Malay Archipelago. This last immense volcanic region, inhabited by the Malay race, comprises the huge Borneo, the ramified Celebes, and the numberless small islands of the Moluccas, the Philippines, etc., connected on the N. W. with the Chinese coast by the island of Formosa. This latter, as well as Hainan, may be properly considered as part of the Chinese mainland. The Loo choo (Liu-Kiu) Islands and the Jap anese Archipelago, the latter joining Kamchatka by the Kuriles, continue farther N. E. this chain of islands which border the coast of Asia. In the Arctic Ocean, the small Bear Islands, the archi pelago of the Liakhof, Anjou, and De Long Islands, as also those of the Kara Sea, are lost amid icefields, and are but occasionally visited by whalers. K( llett's, or Wrangel's Land, off the peninsula of the Tchuktchis, was thoroughly explored by Lieut. R. M. Berry, United States navy.