290 CORALS AND CORAL ISLANDS. 



tends to cultivate the extremest selfishness 1 Assuredly there 

 is not a more unfavorable spot for moral or intellectual pro- 

 gress in the wide world than the coral island. 



Still, if well supplied with foreign stores, including a good 

 stock of ice, they might become, were they more accessible, a 

 pleasant temporary resort for tired workers from civilized 

 lands, who wish quiet, perpetual summer air, salt-water bath- 

 ing, and boating or yachting ; and especially for those who 

 could draw inspiration from the mingled beauties of grove, lake, 

 ocean, and coral meads and grottoes, where 



" Life in rare and beautiful forms 



Is sporting amid the bowers of stone." 



But after all, the dry land of an atoll is so limited, its fea- 

 tures so tame, its supply of fresh water so small, and of salt 

 water so large, that whoever should build his cottage on one 

 of them would probably be glad, after a short experience, to 

 transfer it to an island of larger dimensions, like Tahiti or 

 Upolu, one more varied in surface and productions * that has 

 its mountains and precipices ; its gorges and open valleys ; leap- 

 ing torrents not less than surging billows ; and forests spread- 

 ing up the declivities, as well as groves of palms and corals by 

 the shores. 



The mineral alluded to above as the one mineral product 

 of atolls is calcite or carbonate of lime, the material of the 

 coral rock ; and this is the only kind on the great majority of 

 them. 



But on some of the smaller islands, in the drier equatorial 

 part of the ocean, there are, in addition to this, and the stones 

 brought by logs with the floating pumice, beds of gypsum 

 which have been made through the evaporation of sea- water 

 (which holds it in solution) in the gradually drying lagoon ba- 



