152 
VOYAGE TO THE 
CHAP, hard rock nearly 150 yards in length, covered with about a foot of water, 
beyond which it descended rapidly, and at 500 yards distance no bottom 
Jan. could be found with 1500 feet of line. On the inner side, from the 
trees to the lake, was a gentle deelivity of muddy sand tilled with shells 
of the cardium, linedo, tridacnae, gigas, and a species of trochus. The 
trees, which formed a tolerably thick wood round the lagoon, were 
similar to those at Clermont Tonnere, consisting principally ofpandanus 
and cocoa-nut, interwoven with the tournefortia, scoevola, and lepidium 
piscidium. 
On the south side of the island there was a very narrow entrance to 
the lagoon, too shallow for the passage of boats, even had the water been 
smooth. It was of this opening, I presume, that Captain Wallis observes 
that the surf was too high upon the rocks for his boats to attempt the 
passage. 
The lagoon was comparatively shallow; the edges, for a considerable 
distance, sloped gradually toward the centre and then deepened sud- 
denly ; the edge of the bank being nearly perpendicular. This bank, 
as well as numerous islets in the lagoon, were formed of coral and dead 
and live tridacnas shells. The space between the islets was very rugged, 
and full of deep holes. 
In the lagoon there were several kinds of brilliantly coloured fish ; 
on the reef, some fistularia; and in the surf a brown and black chaetodon 
with a black patch at the junction of the tail with the body. Upon 
the land were seen a few rats and lizards, a white heron, a curlew, 
some sandpipers, and a species of coluraba resembling the columba 
australis. 
In the evening we bore up for Queen Charlotte’s Island, another 
coral formation also discovered by Captain Wallis, and so grown up that 
we could not see any lagoon in its centre, as we had done in all the 
others. Several huts and sheds similar to those at Whitsunday Island 
occur in a bay on its northern shore, but there were no inhabitants. 
It may be remembered that when Captain Wallis visited this island, 
the natives took to their canoes and fled to the next island to the west- 
ward : whether they did so on the present occasion we could not 
determine, but in all probability we should have seen them if they 
