(836,] SINGULAR APPEARANCE. 458 



contented state, from the repeated removals from islet to islet, 

 and perhaps also from, a little mismanagement, things are not very 

 prosperous. The island has no domestic quadruped, excepting 

 the pig, and the main vegetable production is the cocoa-nut. 

 The whole prosperity of the place depends on this tree : the only 

 exports being oil from the nut, and the nuts themselves, which 

 are taken to Singapore and Mauritius, where they are chiefly 

 used, when grated, in making curries. On the cocoa-nut, also, 

 the pigs, which are loaded with fat, almost entirely subsist, as do 

 the ducks and poultry. Even a huge land-crab is furnished by 

 nature with the means to open and feed on this most useful pro- 

 duction. 



The ring-formed reef of the lagoon-island is surmounted in 

 the greater part of its length by linear islets. On the northern 

 or leeward side, there is an opening through which vessels can 

 pass to the anchorage within. On entering, the scene was very 

 curious and rather pretty; its beauty, however, entirely de- 

 pended 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 Direc- 

 tion 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 thi» sultry climate was very oppres- 

 sive ; 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 com- 

 posed 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 syn> 



