But No Sooner Was The
Announcement Made, Than He Came Running On Deck, Spy-Glass In Hand,
And Clapping It To His Eye, Turned Round With The Air Of A Man
Receiving Indubitable Assurance Of Something He Was Quite Certain Of
Before.
The land was precisely that for which he had been steering;
and, with a wind, in less than twenty-four hours we would sight
Tahiti.
What he said was verified.
The island turned out to be one of the Pomotu or Low Group - sometimes
called the Coral Islands - perhaps the most remarkable and interesting
in the Pacific. Lying to the east of Tahiti, the nearest are within a
day's sail of that place.
They are very numerous; mostly small, low, and level; sometimes
wooded, but always covered with verdure. Many are crescent-shaped;
others resemble a horse-shoe in figure. These last are nothing more
than narrow circles of land surrounding a smooth lagoon, connected by
a single opening with the sea. Some of the lagoons, said to have
subterranean outlets, have no visible ones; the inclosing island, in
such cases, being a complete zone of emerald. Other lagoons still,
are girdled by numbers of small, green islets, very near to each
other.
The origin of the entire group is generally ascribed to the coral
insect.
According to some naturalists, this wonderful little creature,
commencing its erections at the bottom of the sea, after the lapse of
centuries, carries them up to the surface, where its labours cease.
Here, the inequalities of the coral collect all floating bodies;
forming, after a time, a soil, in which the seeds carried thither by
birds germinate, and cover the whole with vegetation.
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