The Cannibal Islands: Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas, Ballantyne [top 10 novels txt] 📗

of ordinary rocks, like most other islands of the world, but are literally manufactured or built by millions of extremely small insects which merit particular notice. Let us examine this process of island-making which is carried on very extensively by the artisans of the great South-Sea Factory!

The coral insect is a small creature of the sea which has been gifted with the power of “secreting” or depositing a lime-like substance, with which it builds to itself a little cell or habitation. It fastens this house to a rock at the bottom of the sea. Like many other creatures the coral insect is sociable; it is fond of company, and is never found working except in connection with millions of its friends. Of all the creatures of earth it shows perhaps the best example of what mighty works can be accomplished by union. One man can do comparatively little, but hundreds of men, united in their work, can achieve wonders, as every one knows. They can erect palaces and cathedrals towering to the skies; they can cover hundred of miles of ground with cities, and connect continents with telegraphs, but, with all their union, all their wisdom, and all their power, men cannot build islands—yet this is done by the coral insect; a thing without hand or brain, a creature with little more than a body and a stomach. It is not much bigger than a pin-head, yet hundreds of the lovely, fertile islands of the Pacific Ocean are formed by this busy animalcule. Many of those islands would never have been there but for the coral insect!

When corallines (as they are called) set about building an island, they lay the foundation on the top of a submarine mountain. The ordinary islands of the sea are neither more nor less than the tops of those mountains which rise from the bottom of the sea and project above the surface. Some of these sea-mountains rise high above the surface and form large islands; some only peep, so to speak, out of the waves, thus forming small islands; others again do not rise to the surface at all—their highest peaks being several feet below the level of the ocean. It is on these water-covered mountain-tops that the coral insects lay the foundations of their islands. As few mountain-peaks are level, however, whether above or below water, the insect finds it more convenient to form a ring round the sides of the mountain-top than to build on the exact top itself. Then they set to work with the busy industry of bees. Their talents are few; apparently they have received only one, but they turn that one to good account. They fulfil the work for which they were created. No creature can do more!

They begin to build, and the work advances rapidly, for they are active little masons. The ring round the mountain-top soon begins to shoot upwards and extend outwards. As the labourers continue their work their families increase. It is a thriving and a united community. There are neither wars nor disputes—no quarrelling, no mis-spent time, no misapplied talents. There is unity of action and design, hence the work advances quickly, steadily, and well. In process of time the coral ring becomes a solid wall, which gradually rises above the highest peak of the submarine mountain, and at length approaches the surface of the sea. When it reaches this point the work is done. The coral insect can only work under water. When its delicate head rises above the waves it ceases to build, and, having done its duty, it dies. Those which reach the surface first, die first. The others that are still below water work on, widening and strengthening the wall until they too reach the fatal surface, peep for one moment as it were on the upper world and then perish. Thus the active builders go on adding to the width of the structure, and dying by successive relays; working with their little might during their brief existence, and knowing nothing of the great end which is to result from their modest busy lives.

With the death of the coral insects the foundation-stone of the island is laid, in the form of a ring just peeping out of the ocean. Thenceforth other creatures continue the work. The waves lash and beat upon the uppermost coral cells and break them up into fine white sand. Currents of ocean throw upon this beach pieces of sea-weed and drifting marine substances of various kinds. The winds convey the lighter seeds of land plants to it, and sea-birds that alight upon it to rest do the same thing. Thus, little by little, things accumulate on the top of the coral ring until the summit rises above the reach and fury of the waves. No sooner is this accomplished than the genial sun of those regions calls the seeds into life. A few blades of green shoot up. These are the little tokens of life that give promise of the luxuriance yet to come. Soon the island ring is clothed with rich and beautiful vegetation, cocoa-nut palms begin to sprout and sea-fowl to find shelter where, in former days, the waves of the salt sea alone were to be found. In process of time the roving South-Sea islanders discover this little gem of ocean, and take up their abode on it; and when such a man as Cook sails past it, he sees, perchance, the naked savage on the beach gazing in wonder at his “big canoe,” and the little children swimming like ducks in the calm waters of the lagoon or gambolling like porpoises among the huge breakers outside that roll like driven snow upon the strand.

During their formation, these islands are fraught with danger to ships, for sometimes, in parts of the ocean where charts show deep water, the sailor finds an unexpected coral reef, and, before he is aware, the good ship runs on this living wall and becomes a wreck. Many a noble vessel goes to sea well appointed and with a good brave crew, but never more returns;—who knows how many such have, when all on board thought themselves secure, been dashed to pieces suddenly, and lost upon the coral reefs of the Pacific?

These circular islets of coral never rise more than a few feet above the surface of the sea, but there are many other islands in the South Seas—some of which have been thrown up by the action of volcanoes, and are wild, rugged, mountainous, and of every conceivable shape and size.

The busy corallines before mentioned are so numerous in the South Seas that they build their coral walls everywhere. As they have an objection apparently to commence building in shallow water, they are obliged to keep off the shore a distance of a mile or more, so that when they reach the surface they enclose a belt of water of that width, which is guarded by the reef from the violence of the waves, and forms a splendid natural harbour. Almost every South-Sea island has its coral reef round it, and its harbour of still water between the reef and the shore.

It would seem as if the beneficent Creator had purposely formed those harbours for man’s convenience, because narrow openings are found in all the reefs, without which, of course, the sheltered waters within could not have been entered. These openings are usually found to occur opposite valleys where the streams from the mountains enter the sea. It is therefore supposed that fresh water kills the coral insects at these places, thus preventing the reef from forming an unbroken circle. Low islets are usually formed on each side of the openings on which a few cocoa-nut trees grow; so that the mariner is thus furnished with a natural beacon by which to guide his vessel clear of the reef safely into the harbour.

One of the most interesting of the larger islands of the Pacific is Otaheite (now spelt and pronounced Tahiti), at which Captain Cook arrived on the 4th of April 1769. It had been discovered, however, nearly two years before the date of his visit—as the next chapter will show.