270 CORALS AND CORAL ISLANDS. 



— represents a scene on Duke of York's Island, another of the 

 same solitary group of atolls. The view was taken on the 

 lagoon side, and exhibits the placid lake, the border of verdure 

 far away in the distance, and, near by, the margin of a native 

 village beneath its cocoa-nut grove. A few young plants of 

 the Pandanus stand along the point. The houses are like 

 those of other islands to the west and northwest. The point 

 in front of the village is one of three small quays, two feet out 

 of water. The house, resting partly upon it and partly on 

 poles in the water, and thatched with leaves of the Pan- 

 danus, was apparently a shelter for canoes and fishing-tackle. 

 The Gilbert Group affords an example of a less isolated 

 coral-island people. A beautiful view representing a part of 

 the village of Utiroa, on Drummond's Island, is contained in 

 the same volume of Wilkes's Narrative with the preceding. 

 The public-house of the island is even larger than that on 

 Bowditch's Island, measuring one hundred and twenty feet in 

 length, forty-five feet in width, and forty in height to the 

 ridge-pole. This island, unlike the Duke of York's, was 

 densely peopled, and, owing apparently to the scant supply of 

 fish and vegetables thus occasioned, many of the natives were 

 afflicted with leprosy, and also had bad teeth, both circum- 

 stances unusual for the Pacific. Lean in body and savage in 

 look and gesture, they strangely contrasted with their fat, jolly 

 kinsmen on some of the more northern islands of the same 

 group. An old, fat chief who came from one of these islands 

 to the ship's side in his canoe was actually too large to have 

 reached the deck except by the use of a tackle. It was evi- 

 dent that infanticide — a necessity according to their system 

 of political economy — was more thoroughly practised than on 

 Drummond's Island, and that the population was thus kept 

 from becoming uncomfortably numerous. The obesity was 



