160 FISHES I HAVE KNOWN 



These atolls being novelties to most of us, 

 we got up very early to take a look round. A 

 ring (300 yards wide, not more than 10 feet 

 high) of heaped-up fragments of coral, upon 

 which groves of cocoanut-trees flourished, pre- 

 senting to the deep ocean outside, a broad and 

 solid wall, enclosed a fine harbour fifteen miles 

 long, and from two to five miles broad, with a 

 perfectly protected anchorage. The harbour was 

 edged by a dazzlingly white sloping beach of 

 powdered coral, the water being a vivid green, 

 exquisitely clear, with a bottom of spotless sand. 



To our disgust no one except the ship's doctor 

 had been allowed to go ashore the previous even- 

 ing, owing to passengers of other mail-boats having 

 injured the cocoanut-trees which produce the copra 

 of commerce, i.e., the dried kernel of the nut from 

 which the oil is obtained. But the doctor's services 

 were required at the township, where some five 

 hundred natives employed in the copra business 

 lived ; and when he returned after breakfast with 

 his face swollen almost beyond recognition, so 

 bitten was it by the mosquitoes that had kept him 

 company in his bedroom, we did not regret our 

 restrictions, more especially when he divulged to 

 us how horribly persecuted he had been by the 

 fleas that breed in the sand. He dilated upon the 



