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Updated: June 10, 2025
Manowolko is about fifteen miles long, and is a mere; upraised coral-reef. Two or three hundred yards inland rise cliffs of coral rock, in many parts perpendicular, and one or two hundred feet high; and this, I was informed, is characteristic of the whole island, in which there is no other kind of rock, and no stream of water.
Considerable doubts should be entertained regarding the nature of a reef of this kind, with a very shallow lagoon, and standing far from any other atoll, on account of the possibility of a crater or flat bank of rock lying at the proper depth beneath the surface of the water, thus affording a foundation for a ring-formed coral-reef.
So do I. I believe, if you could find an uninhabited coral-reef island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with plenty of cocoa-palms and bread-fruit on it, and put a handsome young fellow, like our Marylander, ashore upon it, if you touched there a year afterwards, you would find him walking under the palm-trees arm in arm with a pretty woman. Where would she come from? Oh, that 's the miracle!
So what they are like I can only tell from what I have learnt from Mr. Darwin, and Mr. Wallace, and Mr. Jukes, and Mr. Gosse, and last, but not least, from one whose soul was as beautiful as his face, Lucas Barrett, too soon lost to science, who was drowned in exploring such a coral-reef as this stone was once. Then there are such things alive now? Yes, and no.
Centipedes, scorpions and virulently poisonous snakes animate the land, while the shoals, where the natives declare there are "more fish than water," teem with every sort of man-eating shark, and with the cuttle-fish watching for his prey from each interstice of the coral-reef.
Can't you see him, confound him, sitting under a palm-tree in white flannels, with a glass of Jamaica rum in his fist, while we're dodging yellow fever on this coral-reef, and losing our salaries on a crooked roulette-wheel."
Look! are the southern curtains drawn? Fetch me a fan, and so begone! Not that, the palm-tree's rustling leaf Brought from a parching coral-reef! Its breath is heated; I would swing The broad gray plumes, the eagle's wing. I hate these roses' feverish blood! Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud, A long-stemmed lily from the lake, Cold as a coiling water-snake.
This rock is apparently an elevated coral-reef: it also produces moulds of sea-shells, delicately traced and embedded in blocks of apparently unbroken limestone. Of late a fine vein of manganese has been found in the northern or mountainous part of the island: specimens shown to me by Mr. J. Blandy appeared remarkably rich.
The land is fronted by a coral-reef, and from the manner in which islets are known to be formed, we may feel confident that the reef was not three miles wide, when the first, or most backward ridge, was thrown up; and, therefore, we must conclude that the reef has grown outwards during the accumulation of the successive ridges.
Yes, many and many, again and again; some whole ages older than this, a bit of which you see, and some again whole ages newer. But look: then judge for yourself. Look at this geological map. Wherever you see a bit of blue, which is the mark for limestone, you may say, "There is a bit of old coral-reef rising up to the surface."
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