Dashing Forever Against Their Coral
Rampart, The Breakers Looked, In The Distance, Like A Line Of Rearing
White Chargers, Reined In, Tossing Their White Manes, And Bridling
With Foam.
These great natural breakwaters are admirably designed for the
protection of the land.
Nearly all the Society Islands are defended
by them. Were the vast swells of the Pacific to break against the
soft alluvial bottoms which in many places border the sea, the soil
would soon be washed away, and the natives be thus deprived of their
most productive lands. As it is, the banks of no rivulet are firmer.
But the coral barriers answer another purpose. They form all the
harbours of this group, including the twenty-four round about the
shores of Tahiti. Curiously enough, the openings in the reefs, by
which alone vessels enter to their anchorage, are invariably opposite
the mouths of running streams: an advantage fully appreciated by the
mariner who touches for the purpose of watering his ship.
It is said that the fresh water of the land, mixing with the salts
held in solution by the sea, so acts upon the latter as to resist the
formation of the coral; and hence the breaks. Here and there, these
openings are sentinelled, as it were, by little fairy islets, green
as emerald, and waving with palms. Strangely and beautifully
diversifying the long line of breakers, no objects can strike the
fancy more vividly. Pomaree II., with a taste in watering-places
truly Tahitian, selected one of them as a royal retreat.
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