OCEANIC ISLANDS 87 



Some of these islands, like New Zealand and New 

 Caledonia, are in many important respects similar to 

 our own, and seem to be the surviving fragments of a 

 lost continent, which has fallen into ruins and sunk 

 beneath the waves. Others, such as the Sandwich Isles 

 and Fiji, are also of a kind long since familiar to us, 

 clusters of volcanic cones which, like Stromboli and 

 Vulcano of the Mediterranean, rise from the depths of 

 the sea. 



In addition to these, however, there exists a third and 

 strange kind of islands, restricted to the torrid zone, and 

 known to the daring mariners of the Elizabethan period 

 as "low" islands, a name well deserved, since few of 

 them attain a greater elevation than many of the pebble 

 beaches which fringe our own coasts : few, indeed, so 

 great, the loftiest summits of most not exceeding the 

 insignificant height of 10 feet. Owing to this fact 

 they are scarcely visible till a ship is close upon them, 

 and the first glimpse of a low island presents itself 

 as a thin dark-green band, which separates the deep 

 azure of the sky from the still deeper blue of the sea : 

 with nearer approach a cream-coloured streak inserts 

 itself below the green, and is instantly followed by a 

 line of dazzling snowy white, which is soon recognised 

 as the fringe of surf which marks the boundary of 

 the sea. Sailing nearer, the streak of cream-colour 

 becomes the island beach, and the zone of green resolves 

 itself into a mass of luxuriant vegetation, over which 

 the feathery crowns of the graceful cocoa-nut palms, 

 towering to a height of 80 feet, wave indolently in the 

 sea-breeze. 



As the details of this gracious scene, rising like an 

 apparition from the deep, unfold before the eyes, one 

 seems to gaze on some island of enchantment, and with 

 the music of the surf thundering in one's ears one thinks 



