68 



CHAMPANI. 



animal as well as vegetable, is ever added till a 

 humus-bed is formed for thick shrubbery and 

 trees. Unless deposition and vegetation con- 

 tinue to bind the rock, it is liable to be under- 

 mined by the sea, when it forms banks danger- 

 ous to navigation. 



Dr Euschenberger, repeated by a modern 

 traveller, informs us that there are £ four minor 

 reefs, looking like great arks, whose bows and 

 sterns hang bushing over the waters.' As all 

 the plans show, there are five. The northern- 

 most link of the broken chain is Champani (not 

 'Chapany'), the Isle dcs Francais of French 

 charts. It became a God's-acre for Europeans, 

 whose infidel corpses here, as at Maskat, and in 

 ancient Madeira before the days of Captain 

 Cook, had during less latitudinarian times the 

 choice of the dunghill of the cove, or of a hole 

 in the street. Formerly it was frequented by 

 turtle-fishers and egg-seekers : ' black Muhogo,' 1 

 however, has been scared away by visions of fever- 

 stricken, yellow-faced ghosts rising ghastly from 

 the scatter of Christian graves. The bit of sandy 

 bush, distinguished from its neighbours by ab- 

 sence of tall trees, is frequented (1857) by naval 

 and commercial Nimrods, with 'shooting irons' 

 1 Manioc, often erroneously written Mahogo. 



