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178 CORALS AND CORAL ISLANDS. 
the top of the beach, were believed by some to be keeping 
patrol on the ramparts of a kind of fortification. This decep- 
tion arose from the dazzling whiteness of the coral sand, in 
consequence of which, the slope of the beach was not distin- 
guished in the distant view. 
The emerged land beyond the beach, in its earliest stage, 
when barely raised above the tides, appears like a vast field of 
ruins. Angular masses of coral rock, varying in dimensions 
from one to a hundred cubic feet, lie piled together in the 
utmost confusion; and they are so blackened by exposure, or 
from incrusting lichens, as to resemble the clinkers of Mauna 
Loa; moreover, they ring like metal under the hammer. / Such 
regions may be traversed by leaping from block to block, with 
the risk of falling into the many recesses among the huge 
masses. On breaking an edge from the black masses, the 
usual white color of coral is at once apparent. Some of the 
blocks, measuring five or six feet in each of their dimensions, 
were portions of single individual corals; while others had the 
usual conglomerate character of the reef-rock, or, in other 
words, were fragments torn by the waves from the reef-rock. 
In the next stage, coral sand has found lodgment among 
the blocks; and although so scantily supplied as hardly to 
be detected without close attention, some seeds have taken 
root, and vines, purslane, and a few shrubs have begun to 
grow, relieving the scene, by their green leaves, of much of 
its desolate aspect. : 
Both of these stages are illustrated on the greater part of 
coral islands. 
In the last stage, the island stands six to ten feet out of 
water. The surface consists of coral sand, more or less dis- 
colored by vegetable or animal decomposition. Scattered 
among the trees, stand, still uncovered, many of the larger 
