On The Cocoa-Nut, Also, The Pigs, Which Are
Loaded With Fat, Almost Entirely Subsist, As Do The Ducks And
Poultry.
Even a huge land-crab is furnished by nature with
the means to open and feed on this most useful production.
The ring-formed reef of the lagoon-island is surmounted
in the greater part of its length by linear islets. On the
northern or leeward side, there is an opening through which
vessels can pass to the anchorage within. On entering, the
scene was very curious and rather pretty; its beauty, however,
entirely depended on the brilliancy of the surrounding
colours. The shallow, clear, and still water of the lagoon,
resting in its greater part on white sand, is, when illumined
by a vertical sun, of the most vivid green. This brilliant
expanse, several miles in width, is on all sides divided, either
by a line of snow-white breakers from the dark heaving
waters of the ocean, or from the blue vault of heaven by
the strips of land, crowned by the level tops of the cocoa-nut
trees. As a white cloud here and there affords a pleasing
contrast with the azure sky, so in the lagoon, bands of
living coral darken the emerald green water.
The next morning after anchoring, I went on shore on
Direction Island. The strip of dry land is only a few hundred
yards in width; on the lagoon side there is a white calcareous
beach, the radiation from which under this sultry
climate was very oppressive; and on the outer coast, a solid
broad flat of coral-rock served to break the violence of the
open sea.
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