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Updated: May 24, 2025
The southern part is almost filled up with banks of mud and fields of coral, both dead and alive, but there are considerable spaces, between three and four fathoms, and smaller basins, from eight to ten fathoms deep. Probably about half its area consists of sediment, and half of coral-reefs.
In the Dutch chart the southern shore, in the narrowest part of the island, is in two places fringed by reefs of coral. West of SEGORROWODEE Bay, and the extreme S.E. and E. portions are likewise fringed by coral-reefs; all the above-mentioned places coloured red.
He liked to observe the groups of boys fishing at the wharves, or to hear the chat of their fathers about coral-reefs and penguins' eggs; or to sketch the fisher's little daughter awaiting her father at night on some deserted and crumbling wharf, his blue pea-jacket over her fair ring-leted head, and a great cat standing by with tail uplifted, her sole protector.
I will now give a very brief account of the three great classes of coral-reefs; namely, Atolls, Barrier, and Fringing- reefs, and will explain my views on their formation. Almost every voyager who has crossed the Pacific has expressed his unbounded astonishment at the lagoon-islands, or as I shall for the future call them by their Indian name of atolls, and has attempted some explanation.
In this chapter I will give all the facts which I have collected, relating to the distribution of coral-reefs, to the conditions favourable to their increase, to the rate of their growth, and to the depth at which they are formed. These subjects have an important bearing on the theory of the origin of the different classes of coral-reefs.
From the charts lately published on a large scale by the East India Company, it appears that several parts, especially the southern shores of this gulf, are fringed by coral-reefs; but as the water is very shallow, and as there are numerous sandbanks, which are difficult to distinguish on the chart from reefs, I have not coloured the upper part red.
We shall hereafter see that the theory which accounts for the ordinary form of atolls, apparently includes this occasional peculiarity in their structure. In the midst of a group of atolls, there sometimes occur small, flat, very low islands of coral formation, which probably once included a lagoon, since filled up with sediment and coral-reefs.
In this way, those marvellous coral-reefs and coral-islands have been made. Branch by branch, layer by layer, the hard Coral is built up by myriads of the small, soft-bodied creatures. This kind of polyp can live only in warm, clear water.
"Not of my seeing; but plenty of good fruit down to the beach, thank the Lord. There comes the dawn at last." Up flushed the rose, up rushed the sun, and the level rays glittered on the smooth stems of the palm-trees, and threw rainbows across the foam upon the coral-reefs, and gilded lonely uplands far away, where now stands many a stately country-seat and busy engine-house.
On the African side you will see mountains all the way to the strait, with only sand between them and the water. There is nothing that can be called a town between Suez and Koser, over 300 statute miles. All around the sea are coral-reefs; and we shall pass a lighthouse on one right in the middle of it.
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