PAUMATO GROUP. 63 



formation, with an extensive lagoon* in the centre, and is 

 encircled by reefs and rocks, against which the surf beats 

 with great violence. At 5 A. M., tried the current, and 

 found it setting north-west-by-west half-west, one fathom 

 per hour. Wishing to survey the island, we " lay-to ,: 

 during the night. 



August 14th and 15th. At early daylight made all sail 

 and stood for the island we discovered yesterday, and by 

 10 A. M. were so near it that we could distinguish with 

 the naked eye the natives standing on the beach. These 

 savages walked about in groups, and appeared to be armed. 

 At 11 A. M., we proceeded with the rest of the squadron 

 to take our station for surveying. In the afternoon several 

 of the "Vincennes' : boats effected a landing, but were 

 not very courteously received by the natives. They as- 

 sembled in considerable numbers on the beach, and com- 

 manded our people to return to the ships. Finding the 

 order was not heeded, they commenced throwing stones 

 at the boats and brandishing their spears, nor could they 

 be induced to desist, until a musket or two, loaded with 



darker, the bright yellow which was visible at a distance changes to brown, the bluish 

 gray of the lepraides becomes a dusty .black. The edges of neighboring patches approach 

 and run into each other ; and on the dark ground thus formed there appear other lichens 

 of circular shape, and dazzling whiteness. Thus, an organic film or covering, establishes 

 itself by successive layers, and, as mankind in forming settled communities, pass through 

 different stages of civilization, so is the gradual propagation and extension of plants con- 

 nected with determinate physical laws — Humboldt. 



According to another high authority, (Charles Darwin,) the process of formation is the 

 following : — He supposes a mountainous island, surrounded by a coral reef, (a fringing 

 reef attached to the shore,) to undergo subsidence ; the fringing reef which subsides with 

 the island is continually restored to its level by the tendency of the coral-anirnals to regain 

 the surface of the sea, and becomes thus, as the island gradually sinks and is reduced in 

 size, first, an <: encircling reef," at some distance from the included islet, and subsequent- 

 ly when the latter has entirely disappeared, an atoll. According to this view, in which 

 islands are regarded as the culminating points of a submerged land, the relative positions 

 of the different coral-islands would disclose to us that which we could hardly learn by the 

 sounding-line, concerning the configuration of the land, which was above the surface of 

 the sea at an earlier epoch. 



* Lagoon, is the Spanish word for Lake. 



