1836.] SINGULAR APPEARANCE. 453 
contented state, from the repeated removals from islet to islet, 
and perhaps also from a little mismanagement, things are not very 
prosperous. The island has no domestic quadruped, excepting 
_the pig, and the main vegetable production is the cocoa-nut. 
The whole prosperity of the place depends on this tree: the only 
exports being oil from the nut, and the nuts themselves, which 
are taken to Singapore and Mauritius, where they are chiefly 
used, when grated, in making curries. On the cocoa-nut, also, 
the pigs, which are loaded with fat, almost entirely subsist, as do 
the ducks and poultry. Even a huge land-crab is furnished by 
nature with the means to open and feed on this most useful pro- 
duction. 
The ring-formed reef of the lagoon-island is surmounted in 
the greater part of its length by linear islets. On the northern 
or leeward side, there is an opening through which vessels can 
pass to the anchorage within. On entering, the scene was very 
curious and rather pretty; its beauty, however, entirely de- 
pended on the brilliancy of the surrounding colours. The shallow, 
clear, and still water of the lagoon, resting in its greater part on 
white sand, is, when illumined by a vertical sun, of the most 
vivid green. This brilliant expanse, several miles in width, is 
on all'sides divided, either by a line of snow-white breakers from 
the dark heaving waters of the ocean, or from the blue vault of 
heaven by the strips of land, crowned by the level tops of the 
cocoa-nut trees. As a white cloud here and there affords a 
pleasing contrast with the azure sky, so in the lagoon, bands of 
living coral darken the emerald green water. 
The next morning after anchoring, I went on shore on Direc- 
tion Island. The strip of dry land is only a few hundred yards 
in width ; on the lagoon side there is a white calcareous beach, the 
radiation from which under this sultry climate was very oppres- 
sive; and on the outer coast, a solid broad flat of coral-rock 
served to break the violence of the open sea. Excepting near 
the lagoon, where there is some sand, the land is entirely com- 
- posed of rounded fragments of coral. In such a loose, dry, stony 
soil, the climate of the intertropical regions alone could produce 
2 vigorous vegetation. On some of the smaller islets, nothing 
could be more elegant than the manner in which the young and 
full-grown cocoa-nut trees, without destroying each other’s sym- 
