LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



" In the more isolated coral islands the language of the 

 natives indicates their poverty as well as the limited pro- 

 ductions and unvarying features of the land. All words 

 like those for mountain, hill, river, and many of the im- 

 plements 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. It would be an 

 interesting inquiry for the philosopher, to what extent a 

 race of men placed in such circumstances is capable of 

 mental improvement. 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, quad- 

 rupeds 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 

 persons whose ideas had expanded only to the limits of 

 a coral island ; who had never conceived of a surface of 

 land above half a mile in breadth, of a slope higher than 

 a beach, of a change of seasons beyond a variation in 

 the prevalence of rains ? What elevation in morals 

 should be expected upon a contracted islet, so readily 

 overpeopled that threatened starvation drives to infanti- 

 cide, and tends to cultivate the extremest selfishness ? 

 Assuredly there is not a more unfavorable spot for moral 

 or intellectual progress in the wide world than the coral 

 island. 



" Still, if well supplied with foreign stores, including a 

 good stock of ice, they might become, were they more 

 accessible, a pleasant temporary resort for tired workers 

 from civilized lands, who wish quiet, perpetual summer 

 air, salt-water bathing, and boating or yachting; and 

 especially for those who could draw inspiration from the 

 mingled beauties of grove, lake, ocean, and coral meads 

 and grottoes, where 



life in rare and beautiful forms 



Is sporting amid those bowers of stone. 



" But, after all, the dry land of an atoll is so limited, 



220 



