1836.] SINGULAR APPEARANCE. 435 



tainly arc so, as far as regards their personal treatment ; but iri 

 most other points they are considered as slaves. From their dis- 

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

 perhaps also from a little mismanagement, things are not very 

 prospeimis. 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 laud-crab is furnished by nature with 

 the means to open and feed on this most useful production. 



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 Direction 

 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 this sultry climate was very oppressive ; 

 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 composed 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 symmetry, were mingled into one 



