THE PACIFIC AND INDIAN OCEANS.

the birds, the dark shadows and bright lights, the rushing of the torrents, all proclaim the strife of the unloosed elements. At sea the al

batross and little petrel fly as if the storm were their proper sphere, the water rises and sinks as if fulfilling its usual task; the ship alone and its inhabitants seem the objects of wrath. On a forlorn and weather-beaten coast the scene is in

THE ALBATROSS.

deed different, but the feelings partake more of horror than of wild delight.

It is necessary to sail over the Pacific to comprehend its immensity. Moving quickly onward for weeks together, we meet with nothing but the same blue, profoundly deep ocean. Even within the archipelagoes the islands are mere specks, and far distant one from the other. Accustomed to look at maps drawn on a small scale, where dots, shading, and names are crowded together, we do not rightly judge how infinitely small the proportion of dry land is to the water of this vast expanse.

LAGOON ISLANDS.

ON the first of April, 1836, we arrived in view of the Keeling or Cocos Islands, situated in the Indian Ocean, and

INDIAN OCEAN.

about six hundred miles distant from the coast of Sumatra.

KEELING ATOLL

(Very Shallow)

This is one of the lagoon islands (or atolls) of coral formation. Its ring. formed reef is surmounted in the greater part of its length by narrow islets. On the northern or leeward side there is an opening through which vessels can pass to the anchorage within -the shallow, clear, and still water of the lagoon, which, resting in its great

er part on white sand, is, when illumined by a vertical sun, of the most vivid

green.

On the 6th I accompanied Captain Fitz Roy to an island at the head of the lagoon. The channel was exceedingly intricate, winding through fields of delicately branched corals. When we arrived at the head, 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 frag ments, and the line of furious breakers, all rounding away toward either hand. The ocean, throwing its waters over

INDIAN OCEAN.

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 con

viction 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.

INDIAN OCEAN.

The living polyps 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 labor of myriads of architects at work night and day, month after month? Thus do we see the soft and gelati

nous 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.

A few miles north of Keeling there is another small atoll, the lagoon of which is nearly filled up with coral mud. Cap