CORAL REEFS, AND TRADE-WIND. 21 
for the royal family, and a frequent resort for what 
might be called the fashionable and gay of Tahiti. 
Hither the areois, dancers, and singers, were 
accustomed to repair, together with those whose 
lives were professedly devoted to indolence and 
pleasure. It was also frequented by the females 
of the higher class, for the purposes of hacipori, 
increasing the corpulency of their persons, and 
iremoving, by luxurious ease under the embowering 
shade of the cocoa-nut groves, the dark tinge 
which the vertical sun of Tahiti might have burnt 
upon their complexions. So great was the inter¬ 
course formerly, that a hundred canoes have some¬ 
times been seen at one time on the beach. 
The coral reefs, around the islands, not only 
protect the low land from the violence of the sea, 
but often exhibit one of the most sublime and 
beautiful marine spectacles that it is possible to 
behold. They are generally a mile, or a mile and 
a half, and occasionally two miles, from the shore. 
The surface of the water within the reef is placid 
and transparent; while that without, if there be 
the slightest breeze, is considerably agitated; and, 
being unsheltered from the wind, is generally raised 
in high and foaming waves. 
The trade-wind, blowing constantly towards the 
shore, drives the waves with violence upon the 
reef, which is from five, to twenty or thirty yards 
wide. The long rolling billows of the Pacific, 
extending sometimes, in one unbroken line, a mile 
or a mile and a half along the reef, arrested by this 
natural barrier, often rise ten, twelve, or fourteen 
feet above its surface; and then, bending over it 
their white foaming tops, form a graceful liquid 
arch, glittering in the rays of a tropical sun, as if 
studded with brilliants. But, before the eyes of 
