THE GREAT OCEAN. 359 



islands, and, as it were, annexed to the groups 

 which they form. Their formation, however, is not 

 exclusively peculiar to this basin. The ill-famed 

 sea between the coast of New Holland, and the 

 series of Forelands, beginning at New Caledonia, 

 and extending beyond Torres' Straits, (the sea 

 where La Peyrouse perished, and Flinders narrowly 

 escaped the same fate), is filled with reefs and 

 banks of this kind. In the Indian Ocean lie many 

 (for the most part uninhabited) islands and reefs, 

 which belong to the same formation. Such are 

 the Chagos, Juan de Nova, Cosmoledo, Assump- 

 tion, the Amirante, the Cocos islands, &c. The 

 Laccadive and Maldive islands, as far as we may 

 venture to infer, from the imperfect and unsatis- 

 factory accounts that we have of them, may pro- 

 bably be included ; and, lastly, the stone of Guada- 

 loupe, shows us the elements of this formation in 

 the Atlantic Ocean, though in that narrow strait 

 it has not become an independent production of 

 new land. 



In the Great Ocean, and in the Indian Sea, the 

 high and low islands lie towards the west, leaning, 

 as it were, against the adjacent continents, which 

 are all variously indented, from the east towards 

 the west, and we may repeat the same observation, 

 only on a more limited scale, in the Atlantic 

 Ocean. The Gulf of Mexico represents, in the 

 most striking manner, the Chinese Sea, and the 

 archipelageos that bound it. The island of Borneo 



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