AN ARTinCIAL CHANNEL. 241 



blocks should not have been flung up along the whole extent 

 of the 'western reef. They do, in fact, lie in a sjjot which may 

 undoubtedly be regarded as the least exposed of the whole 

 reef. 



The argument here put forward, and which seems to prove a 

 recent upheaval, can be supplemented by others from which it 

 derives weight. The little island of Nariungas, before spoken 

 of, includes a small lagoon quite divided from the larger one 

 (see Map II.) ; its mean depth is from 2 to 6 feet, and it is not en- 

 closed by trees on its eastern side, though in every other direc- 

 tion it is hidden by shrubs. This lagoon formerly communicated 

 directly with the sea by a narrow canal which cut through the 

 eastern reef in a perfectly straight line. The natives of 

 Kriangle told me that this channel had been cut by the crew 

 of a Spanish vessel, and a few of the oldest remembered having 

 seen the ship there. The accuracy of this story was confirmed 

 to me by Captain Woodiu, of the 'Lady Leigh,' who had called 

 there thirty years ago, and within from five to ten years after 

 that Spanish ship, which had been despatched with others from 

 Manila to these islands for the regular trade in trepang. The 

 channel cut through the reef, and of which the banks are still 

 distinctly recognisable, was too wide for an ordinary boat-canal, 

 and it is probable that it served to admit the ship itself into 

 the small lagoon of Nariungas. The ships which at that time 

 traded with the islands were quite small — schooners of from 50 

 to 100 tons at most — and such a canal must have been quite 

 large enough for them. But, in its present condition, the reef 

 is raised far too much above ordinary flood-tide to allow of our 

 supposing that the depth of the channel is the same at present as 

 it was then ; it must, on the contrary, have been veiy much 

 deeper if the canal was to be of any practical use. Even now 

 it would be quite superfluous to cut such a channel for boats, 

 since it could be available for them only at the highest tides, 

 when the passage across the reef itself is practicable. The 

 present high position of the canal can thus be accounted for 

 only by supposing that it has been raised together with the reef, 

 and there is further evidence for this in the fact that the lagoon 

 is now much too shallow to admit a schooner ; and, above all, 



