452 A LAGOON-ISLAND. [chap. xx. 



narrow islet, and found a great surf breaking on the wind- 

 ward coast. I can hardly explain the reason, but there is 

 to my mind much grandeur in the view of the outer shores 

 of these lagoon -islands. There is a simplicity in the 

 barrier-like beach, the margin of green bushes and tall 

 cocoa-nuts, the solid flat of dead coral-rock, strewed here 

 and there with great loose fragments, and the line of 

 furious breakers, all rounding away towards either hand. 

 The ocean throwing its waters over the broad reef appears 

 an invincible, all-powerful enemy ; yet we see it resisted, 

 and even conquered, by means which at first seem most 

 weak and inefficient. It is not that the ocean spares the 

 rock of coral ; the great fragments scattered over the reef, 

 and heaped on the beach, whence the tall cocoa-nut springs, 

 plainly bespeak the unrelenting power of the waves. Nor 

 are any periods of repose granted. The long swell caused 

 by the gentle but steady action of the trade wind, always 

 blowing in one direction over a wide area, causes breakers, 

 almost equalling in force those during a gale of wind in 

 the temperate regions, and which never cease to rage. It 

 is impossible to behold these waves without feeling a con- 

 viction that an island, though built of the hardest rock, let 

 it be porphyry, granite, or quartz, would ultimately yield 

 and be demolished by such an irresistible power. Yet 

 these low, insignificant coral-islets stand and are victorious : 

 for here another power, as an antagonist, takes part in the 

 contest. The organic forces separate the atoms of 

 carbonate of lime, one by one, from the foaming breakers, 

 and unite them into a symmetrical structure. Let the 

 hurricane tear up its thousand huge fragments ; yet what 

 will that tell against the accumulated labour of myriads of 

 architects at work night and day, month after month? 

 Thus do we see the soft and gelatinous body of a polypus, 

 through the agency of the vital laws, conquering the great 

 mechanical power of the waves of an ocean which neither 

 the art of man nor the inanimate works of nature could 

 successfully resist. 



We did not return on board till late in the evening, 

 for we stayed a long time In the lagoon, examining the 

 fields of coral and the gigantic shells of the chama, into 

 which, if a man were to put his hand, he would not, as 

 long as the animal lived, be able to withdraw it. Near the 

 head of the lagoon, I was much surprised to find a wide 

 area, considerably more than a mile square, covered as with 



