PHYSICAL HISTORY AND GEOLOGY. 31 



Tlie first process toward the forming of this rock must neces- 

 sarily be the pounding up of the material out of which it is con- 

 structed. Wherever the polyps build close to the surface their 

 habitations are attacked by the surf which they themselves 

 create. The long white line of foam which meets the eye of 

 the observer gazing southward from any eminence, and parts the 

 blue waters of the outer world from the more nearly green 

 within, is but the line of battle between the organic and the 

 inorganic forces. It is here that life asserts her supremacy 

 over the sea, and it is here that the sea maintains her right of 

 domain as an inheritance of prior birth. Blocks of coral and 

 coralline are detached and broken, their parts are rocked to and 

 fro in the withering crest, and ultimately, when the fragments 

 have been sufficiently punished by the sea, they are handed 

 over for further chastisement to the action of the wind. In 

 this way the particles are ground finer and finer, a true sand 

 is formed, and dunes begin to rear their heads above the ocean 

 level. Traveling in the line of the wind the dunes pass on- 

 ward, climb over one another's backs, and comb the gently 

 flowing crests ; from pigmy hillocks they rise into well-fashioned 

 knolls, and ultimately stand as the eminences which to-day are 

 the Bermudas. No one who, on the south shore, has watched 

 the great tongues of moving sand, — the sand glaciers of Tucker's 

 Town and Elbow Bay, for example — stealthily encroaching 

 upon the hill-tops of the interior, and burying everything, in 

 the manner of the locusts of South Africa, beneath their man- 

 tle of destruction, can have failed to be impressed by the char- 

 acter and the magnitude of the work that is being accomplished. 

 It is truly but the music of the sea and wind, but there is 

 enough of it to turn water into land. It seems, indeed, as 

 though Virgil had divined some such region as this when he de- 

 picted the home of jEoIus in the following beautiful lines : — 



Here ^olus, in cavern vast. 



With bolt and barrier fetters fast 



Rebellious storm and howling blast. 



They with the rock's reverberant roar 



