330 KEELING ISLAND. [CHAP. ^ 



pretty ; its beauty, however, entirely depended on the brilliancy of the 

 surrounding colours. The shallow, clear, and still water of the lagoon, 

 resting in its greater part on white sand, is, when illumined by a 

 vertical sun, of the most vivid green. This brilliant expanse, several 

 miles in width, is on all sides divided, either by a line of snow-white 

 breakers from the dark heaving waters of the ocean, or from the blue 

 vault of heaven by the strips of land, crowned by the level tops of the 

 cocoa-nut trees. As a white cloud here and there affords a pleasing 

 contrast with the azure sky, so in the lagoon, bands of living coral 

 darken the emerald green water. 



The next morning after anchoring, I went on shore on Direction 

 Island. The strip of dry land is only a few hundred yards in width ; 

 on the lagoon side there is a white calcareous beach, the radiation from 

 which under this sultry climate was very oppressive ; and on the outer 

 coast, a solid broad flat of coral-rock served to break the violence of 

 the open sea. Excepting near the lagoon, where there is some sand, 

 the land is entirely composed of rounded fragments of coral. In such 

 a loose, dry, stony soil, the climate of the intertropical regions alone 

 could produce a vigorous vegetation. On some of the smaller islets, 

 nothing could be more elegant than the manner in which the young and 

 full-grown cocoa-nut trees, without destroying each other's symmetry, 

 were mingled into one wood. A beach of glittering white sand formed 

 a border to these fairy spots. 



I will now give a sketch of the natural history of these islands, 

 which, from its very paucity, possesses a peculiar interest. The cocoa- 

 nut tree, at the first glance, seems to compose the whole wood ; there 

 are, however, five or six other trees. One of these grows to a very 

 large size, but, from the extreme softness of its wood, is useless; 

 another sort affords excellent timber for ship-building. Besides the 

 trees, the number of plants is exceedingly limited, an3 consists of 

 insignificant weeds. In my collection, which includes, J believe, nearly 

 the perfect Flora, there are twenty species, without reckoning a moss, 

 lichen, and fungus. To this number two trees must be added ; one of 

 which was not in flower, and the other I only heard of. The latter is 

 a solitary tree of its kind, and grows near the beach, where, without 

 doubt, the one seed was thrown up by the waves. A Guilandina also 

 grows on only one of the islets. I do not include in the above list the 

 sugar-cane, banana, some other vegetables, fruit-trees, and imported 

 grasses. As the islands consist entirely of coral, and at one time must 

 have existed as mere water-washed reefs, all their terrestrial produc- 

 tions must have been transported here by the waves of the sea. In 

 accordance with this, the Florula has quite the character of a refuge 

 for the destitute : Professor Henslow informs me that of the twenty 

 species nineteen belong to different genera, and these again to no less 

 than sixteen families 1 * 



In Holman'sf "Travels" an account is given, on the authority of 



* These plants are described in the " Annals of Nat. Hjst," vpL L, 1838, 



t Holman's " Travels," vol. iv., p. 378., 



