THE COMPLETED ATOLL. 289 



sustenance, and fish, shellfish, and crabs from the reefs their 

 only animal food. Scanty too is the supply ; and infanticide 

 is resorted to in self-defence, where but a few years would 

 otherwise overstock the half a dozen square miles of which 

 their little world consists — a world without rivers, without 

 hills, in the midst of salt water, with the most elevated point 

 but ten to twenty feet above high tide, and no part more than 

 three hundred yards from the ocean. 



In the more isolated coral islands, the language of the na- 

 tives indicates their poverty as well as the limited productions 

 and unvarying features of the land. All words like those for 

 mountain, hill, river, and many of the implements of their an- 

 cestors, as well as the trees and other vegetation of the land 

 from which they are derived, are lost to them ; and as words 

 are but signs for ideas, they have fallen off in general intelli- 

 gence. It would be an interesting inquiry for the philosopher, 

 to what extent a race of men placed in such circumstances is 

 capable of mental improvement. Perhaps the query might 

 be best answered by another, How many of the various arts of 

 civilized life could exist in a land where shells are the only 

 cutting instruments, — the plants of the land in all but twen- 

 ty-nine in number, — minerals but one, — quadrupeds none, 

 with the exception of foreign rats or mice, — fresh water barely 

 enough for household purposes, — no streams, nor mountains, 

 nor hills ? How much of the poetry or literature of Europe 

 would be intelligible to persons whose ideas had expanded 

 only to the limits of a coral island ; who had never conceived 

 of a surface of land above half a mile in breadth, — of a slope 

 higher than a beach, — of a change of seasons beyond a varia- 

 tion in the prevalence of rains ? What elevation in morals 

 should be expected upon a contracted islet, so readily over- 

 peopled that threatened starvation drives to infanticide, and 



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