THE ISLANDS OF THE BAY OF BENGAL. Ill 



wrecked here; the numerous fragments I saw on the beach, 

 where I first landed, clearly belonged to some European craft, and 

 it would be well, I think, if a small tank and rest-house were here 

 constructed ; the high-wooded crest, as the deeply furrowed water- 

 courses attest, attracts heavy rainfalls, and all that is needful is to 

 provide for the storage of some small fraction of this. 



Long before daylight of the 24th we were alongside the 

 Great Coco, a long low island some 6 or 7 miles long and from 

 1 1 to 2 miles in breadth, running nearly north and south. A 

 broad snow-white coral beach surrounds the whole island. Just 

 inside of which a narrow belt of cocoanut trees, broken, it is 

 true, here and there, but on the whole wonderfully continuous, 

 fences in the whole of the island that is above high-water 

 mark. 



We anchored in the bay, mostly very shallow, on the eastern 

 side and towards the northern end of the island. A fringing 

 reef of coral extends, almost everywhere, back from the beach to 

 a distance of from 100 yards to nearly half a mile, and we found, 

 after much trouble, only a single narrow passage through which 

 we were able to run our boats right on to the beach. 



The whole of the upper portion of the bay, lying up towards 

 Table Island, is excessively shallow, and paved throughout with 

 many colored corals and madrepores, the haunts of innumer- 

 able shoals of tiny bright-hued fish. Several turtles were seen 

 scudding away as the boats neared the land into deeper water, 

 and a great shoal of porpoises feeding in a long, straight, regu- 

 lar line like a regiment on parade, were disturbed from their 

 comfortable quarters by our approach. 



Landing we found that within the cocoanut fringe the 

 island was fairly, but not densely, wooded. In the central portion 

 of the island one or two rows of parallel ridges or mounds, no 

 where rising, I should guess, to an elevation of more than 50 

 feet above the sea, run down from north to south. Here and 

 there, patches between, or at the feet of, these ridges are bare 

 of trees, and appear to be swamps or ponds during the rainy 

 season. These spots, when we visited them, were perfectly dry, 

 and covered with a thick growth of coarse grasses. {Andro- 

 pogon, sp.) 



In walking through the jungles, crossing from one side of 

 the island to the other, I twice obtained glimpses of wild pigs, 

 and others of the pavty saw and heard domestic fowls, of which 

 a few have run wild upon the island. 



Birds of all kinds were more numerous here than iu any other 

 locality which we have visited during our trip. I do not mean 



