XX 
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 
