NEW HOLLAND. 145 



New dangers now awaited him ; a vaft fea came rolling from 

 the eaft, and brought him nearer and nearer the perils he fought 

 to fliun. The fame billow which had waflied the fide of the 

 fliip, broke to a tremendous height upon the adjacent rocks, 

 leaving beneath an unfathomable watery valley, no broader 

 than the bafe of that fingle wave. Two light breezes faved 

 them from the jaws of death. After the mod arduous ef- 

 forts, they got through another favorable opening in the reef, 

 through which the Ihip was carried by a current of amazing 

 rapidity. They now exulted in recovering that very fituation 

 they had fo long labored to extricate therafelves from. The 

 opening was not more than a quarter of a mile wide ; yet the 

 force of the torrent carried the fliip exadlly in the mid-way. 

 Here it v/as impoflible not to be grateful to Heaven. Captain 

 Cook called this falutary gap Providential Inlet, and this proof of 'providential 

 piety remains both in the book, and in the chart. The impiety 

 of expunging it would have been too glaring. 



These coral reefs are moft furpriling operations of nature; Coral Reefs. 

 they rife like a wall almoft perpendicularly out of the unfathom- 

 able deep, and at low water are dry in many places ; here the 

 enormous waves of the vaft fouthern ocean, meeting with fo 

 abrupt a refiftance, break with inconceivable violence, in a furf 

 which no rocks or ftorms in the northern hemifphere can pro- 

 duce. 



To form thefe ftupendous works, nature makes ufe of no 

 other inftruments than a little worm, contemptible to vulgar 

 eyes. Well may we join in the fine apoftrophe of P//;/)', in his 



Vol. IV. U tarn 



