LAGOON ISLANDS 489 



element, where, after a certain time, a new shell is formed ; it 

 is, however, too thin to be of any service, and the animal 

 always appears languishing and sickly." 



When we arrived at the head of the lagoon, we crossed a 

 narrow islet, and found a great surf breaking on the windward 

 coast. I can hardly explain the reason, but there is to my 

 mind much grandeur in the view of the outer shores of these 

 lagoon islands. There is a simplicity in the barrier-like beach, 

 the margin of green bushes and tall cocoa-nuts, the solid flat of 

 dead coral -rock, strewed here and there with great loose 

 fragments, and the line of furious breakers, all rounding away 

 towards either hand. The ocean throwing its waters over the 

 broad reef appears an invincible, all-powerful enemy ; yet we 

 see it resisted, and even conquered, by means which at first 

 seem most weak and inefficient. It is not that the ocean 

 spares the rock of coral ; the great fragments scattered over 

 the reef, and heaped on the beach, whence the tall cocoa-nut 

 springs, plainly bespeak the unrelenting power of the waves. 

 Nor are any periods of repose granted. The long swell caused 

 by the gentle but steady action of the trade -wind, always 

 blowing in one direction over a wide area, causes breakers, 

 almost equalling in force those during a gale of wind in the 

 temperate regions, and which never cease to rage. It is 

 impossible to behold these waves without feeling a conviction 

 that an island, though built of the hardest rock, let it be 

 porphyry, granite, or quartz, would ultimately yield and be 

 demolished by such an irresistible power. Yet these low, 

 insignificant coral -islets stand and are victorious : for here 

 another power, as an antagonist, takes part in the contest. 

 The organic forces separate the atoms of carbonate of lime, 

 one by one, from the foaming breakers, and unite them into a 

 symmetrical structure. Let the hurricane tear up its thousand 

 huge fragments ; yet what will that tell against the accumulated 

 labour of myriads of architects at work night and day, month 

 after month ? Thus do we see the soft and gelatinous body of 

 a polypus, through the agency of the vital laws, conquering the 

 great mechanical power of the waves of an ocean which neither 

 the art of man nor the inanimate works of nature could 

 successfully resist. 



We did not return on board till late in the evening, for we 



