42 CORAL AND ATOLLS 



thing for George Ross to take a party of his men to camp upon 

 Christmas Island. Expeditions were made to bring home 

 some of the valuable timber that grew in such abundance on 

 every mountain- slope of this fine island, and the advantages of 

 a permanent settlement there were apparent to the Governor. 

 In 1888 he therefore took his brother Andrew and a party of 

 Cocos-born men, and making a clearing in the neighbourhood 

 of Flying Fish Cove, he built houses and work-sheds and laid 

 the foundations of a colony. 



The little band of colonists set to work at once : coffee and 

 coco palms were planted, the island supply of fresh water was 

 conserved and wells were made for its storinof, It seemed to 

 Georofe Ross that his ideals were to be realised, and that here 

 he had a territory which did not know the confines of a few 

 miles of barrier reef, and could at the most provide a 

 livelihood for a few hundred active men. Christmas Island 

 was clothed with virgin forests to the top of its plateau a 

 thousand feet above the water-line, and it had never been 

 inhabited or in any way exploited ; it was a field for unlimited 

 enterprise, and for the expansion of the Cocos-Keeling colony. 

 George Ross was a happy man ; he dreamed of subjects to be 

 numbered by thousands instead of by hundreds, and a suffi- 

 ciency of hardy enterprise and pioneer work to shape the man- 

 hood of his people for many years to come. He at once took 

 steps to obtain a legal tenure of the island, and in 1889 he 

 made application to the Straits Settlements Government for 

 a grant of land there. But he had not reckoned with the 

 business instincts of men situated nearer to the sources of 

 information than he himself was in his out-of-the-way corner 

 of the earth. Specimens of the rocks of the island, collected 

 by Captain Aldrich of H.M.S. Erjeria, and by George Ross 

 himself, had been submitted to experts at home, and found to 

 consist of nearly pure phosphate of lime. 



The greed of wealth would not allow the world to sanc- 

 tion an idealist like George Ross to establish a rural Utopia 

 upon an island, the whole extent of the surface of which could 

 be shovelled into the holds of ships and sold for high prices. 



