THE COMPLETED ATOLL. ja5 
is poetry in every feature, but the natives find this a poor 
substitute for the bread-fruit and yams of more favored lands. 
The cocoanut and pandanus are, in general, the only products 
of the vegetable kingdom afforded for their sustenance, and 
fish, shellfish, and crabs from the reefs their only animal 
food. Scanty too is the supply; and infanticide is resorted 
to in self-defence, where but a few years would otherwise 
overstock the half a dozen square miles of which their little 
world consists — a world without rivers, without hills, in the 
midst of salt water, with the most elevated point but ten to 
twenty feet above high tide, and no part more than three 
hundred yards from the ocean. 
In the more isolated coral islands, the language of the 
natives indicates their poverty, as well as the limited produc- 
tions and unvarying features of the land. All words like 
those for mountain, hill, river, and many of the implements 
of their ancestors, as well as the trees and other vegetation 
of the land from which they are derived, are lost to them ; 
and as words are but signs for ideas, they have fallen off in 
general intelligence. To what extent a race of men placed 
in such circumstances is capable of mental improvement, 
would be an interesting inquiry for the philosopher. Perhaps 
the query might be best answered by another, How many 
of the various arts of civilized life could exist in a land 
where shells are the only cutting instruments, — the plants 
of the land in all but twenty-nine in number, — minerals but 
one, — quadrupeds none, with the exception of foreign rats or 
mice, — fresh water barely enough for household purposes, — 
no streams, nor mountains, nor hills? How much of the 
poetry or literature of Europe would be intelligible to per- 
sons whose ideas had expanded only to the limits of a coral 
island; who had never conceived of a surface of land above 
