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Updated: June 24, 2025
The ring-formed reefs of the Maldiva atolls. The submerged condition of parts or of the whole of some annular reefs. The disseverment of large atolls. The union of atolls by linear reefs. The Great Chagos Bank. Objections from the area and amount of subsidence required by the theory, considered. The probable composition of the lower parts of atolls.
Captain Moresby informs me that in the Chagos archipelago in this same ocean, the natives, by a horrible process, take the shell from the back of the living turtle. "It is covered with burning charcoal, which causes the outer shell to curl upwards, it is then forced off with a knife, and before it becomes cold flattened between boards.
No more than eight volunteers are required to be dispatched to Ashanti Protectorate, Bechuanaland, Chagos Archipelago, Comoro Islands, Marquesas Islands, Marshall Islands, Spanish Sahara and Tonga Islands in order to ensure the attainment of the preeminent goal of the Global Crusade, excluding the Socialist republics and satellite countries.
Captain Moresby believes the rim consists of dead rock, thinly covered with sand, and he is certain this is the case with the external rim of the Great Chagos Bank, which is also essentially a submerged atoll.
In a westerly direction at Dutch Bay, Ceylon, distant 2,058 miles, the sounds were heard between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. on the morning of the 27th of August. Lastly, at the Chagos Islands, distant 2,267 miles, the detonations were audible between 10 and 11 a.m. of the same day.
These three great groups which have already been often noticed, are now well-known from the admirable surveys of Captain Moresby and Lieutenant Powell. The published charts, which are worthy of the most attentive examination, at once show that the CHAGOS and MALDIVA groups are entirely formed of great atolls, or lagoon-formed reefs, surmounted by islets.
There is, however, not much foundation for this view; for nowhere are coral-reefs more extensive than on the shores of New Caledonia, and of north-eastern Australia, which consist of primary formations; and in the largest groups of atolls, namely the Maldiva, Chagos, Marshall, Gilbert, and Low Archipelagoes, there is no volcanic or other kind of rock, excepting that formed of coral.
To this may be added the Chagos group of low islands, situated 280 miles distant, in a line prolonged from the southern extremity of the Maldivas. This group, including the submerged banks, is 170 miles in length and 80 in breadth.
In the deep lagoons of Peros Banhos and of the Great Chagos Bank, there are, as already described, small steep-sided knolls covered with living coral. There are similar knolls in the southern Maldiva atolls, some of which, as Captain Moresby assures me, are less than a hundred yards in diameter, and rise to the surface from a depth of between two hundred and fifty and three hundred feet.
We must look to some other cause than the rate of growth; and I suspect it will be found in the reefs being formed of different species of corals, adapted to live at different depths. The Great Chagos Bank is situated in the centre of the Chagos Group, and the Pitt and Speaker Banks at its two extreme points.
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