About A Hundred Yards From The Beach Rises A Wall Of Coral
Rock, Ten Or Twenty Feet High, Above Which Is An Undulating
Surface Of Rugged Coral, Which Slopes Downward Towards The
Interior, And Then After A Slight Ascent Is Bounded By A Second
Wall Of Coral.
Similar walls occur higher up, and coral is found
on the highest part of the island.
This peculiar structure teaches us that before the coral was
formed land existed in this spot; that this land sunk gradually
beneath the waters, but with intervals of rest, during which
encircling reef's were formed around it at different elevations;
that it then rose to above its present elevation, and is now
again sinking. We infer this, because encircling reefs are a
proof of subsidence; and if the island were again elevated about
a hundred feet, what is now the reef and the shallow sea within
it would form a wall of coral rock, and an undulating coralline
plain, exactly similar to those that still exist at various
altitudes up to the summit of the island. We learn also that
these changes have taken place at a comparatively recent epoch,
for the surface of the coral has scarcely suffered from the
action of the weather, and hundreds of sea-shells, exactly
resembling those still found upon the beach, and many of them
retaining their gloss and even their colour, are scattered over
the surface of the island to near its summit.
Whether the Goram group formed originally part of New Guinea or
of Ceram it is scarcely possible to determine, and its
productions will throw little light upon the question, if, as I
suppose, the islands have been entirely submerged within the
epoch of existing species of animals, as in that case it must owe
its present fauna and flora to recent immigration from
surrounding lands; and with this view its poverty in species very
well agrees.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 95 of 412
Words from 25340 to 25659
of 111511
