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Updated: May 14, 2025
Northward, along the leeward coast of Malaita, the Ariel worked her leisurely way, threading the colour-riotous lagoon that lay between the shore-reefs and outer-reefs, daring passages so narrow and coral-patched that Captain Winters averred each day added a thousand grey hairs to his head, and dropping anchor off every walled inlet of the outer reef and every mangrove swamp of the mainland that looked promising of cannibal life.
There are many such lagoons, and this one, called by the fish-world, "Coral-Land," because of the beautiful coral within its depths, was only one of many coral-lands, for coral-islands, and coral-reefs are found everywhere in tropical seas. Sometimes these coral-reefs are found near the shores of large islands, or continents, and then they are called Shore-Reefs.
I do not here treat of the polypifers, which construct these vast works, except so far as relates to their distribution, and to the conditions favourable to their vigorous growth. Without any distinct intention to classify coral-reefs, most voyagers have spoken of them under the following heads: "lagoon-islands," or "atolls," "barrier" or "encircling reefs," and "fringing" or "shore-reefs."
The barrier-reefs of Australia and of New Caledonia, owing to their enormous dimensions, have excited much attention: in structure and form they resemble those encircling many of the smaller islands in the Pacific Ocean. With respect to fringing, or shore-reefs, there is little in their structure which needs explanation; and their name expresses their comparatively small extension.
Fringing-reefs, or, as they have been called by some voyagers, shore-reefs, whether skirting an island or part of a continent, might at first be thought to differ little, except in generally being of less breadth, from barrier-reefs.
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