IN THE C0C08-KEELING ISLANDS. 39 



gales round the lagoon shores ; and pointed out to me that 

 where, in such places, a portion of the land was washed out, 

 the same amount was replaced in some adjacent part of the 

 shore. He showed me also on the little islet, named in the 

 chart Workhouse Island, a rather exposed corner which had 

 been completely washed away with all the trees on it, in the 

 cyclone of 1876, but which in January, 1878, had become to a 

 great extent replaced. A period going on for half a century 

 had elapsed since Mr. Darwin's observations, and the encroach- 

 ments of the sea on the land had, in my judgment at least, not 

 increased at all ; on the contrary, it struck me that the land 

 was gaining on the lagoon. This, too, was Mr. Boss's opinion, 

 from a thorough and intelligent knowledge of every part of 

 its coast and surface. 



On West Island, in a short time the lagoonlet will be 

 entirely converted into dry land. At present it is nearly 

 filled up, and remains dry at all ordinary tides except on 

 two or three occasions a year, with a pure white chalk-like 

 sediment, the detritus of coral-attrition by the waves washed 

 in from the outside of the reef, where the sea is always more 

 or less turbid; all along its coast also, as far as its south 

 corner, the West Island is gaining ground by the accumu- 

 lation of sediment. If subsidence were proceeding, this sedi- 

 ment could not rise above high-water level. In the centre 

 of Horsburgh Island, which is three-quarters of a mile in 

 breadth, the ground exhibits an unbroken solid conglomerate 

 surface not composed of the strewn debi is from storms ; 

 and a lakelet of salt water containing no life, which occurs 

 in it, seems to be an old lagoon extremely shallow and nearly 

 obliterated. In North Island also, 15 miles distant, as Mr. 

 Koss told me, the lagoon was rapidly filling up ; its entrance 

 passage has since our knowledge of it been always barred by 

 the reef. In all these islands, in sinking wells down for some 

 12 — 20 feet through the solid conglomerate of which all the 

 islands are composed, fresh water can be found. The only 

 exception is Direction Island, in which no fresh water has been 

 discovered, and which is entirely composed, as far as borings 

 have been made, of shingle debris such as is found along the 

 beach of the seaward margin. 



Between Direction Island and Workhouse Island I observed 



