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Updated: June 24, 2025
KISSA, off the point of Timor, has its "shore fronted by a reef, steep too on the outer side, over which small proahs can go at the time of high water;" coloured red. TIMOR; most of the points, and some considerable spaces of the northern shore, are seen in Freycinet's chart to be fringed by coral-reefs; and mention is made of them in the accompanying "Hydrog. Memoir;" coloured red.
Byron himself hardly sailed beyond Cape Horn; but three years later a second English seaman, Captain Wallis, succeeded in reaching the central island of the Pacific and in skirting the coral-reefs of Tahiti, and in 1768 a more famous mariner traversed the great ocean from end to end.
He had been in Cuba for some months, leading an adventurous life, visiting sugar-plantations, copper-mines, and coffee-estates, descending into caves, and botanizing in tropical jungles, cruising for a fortnight in an open boat among the coral-reefs, hunting turtles and manatis, and visiting all sorts of people from whom information was to be had, from foreign consuls and Lazarist missionaries down to retired slave-dealers and assassins.
The WESTERN SHORES OF AMERICA appear to be entirely without coral-reefs; south of the equator the survey of the "Beagle", and north of it, the published charts show that this is the case. Even in the Bay of PANAMA, where corals flourish, there are no true coral-reefs, as I have been informed by Mr. Lloyd.
Dr. Semper's objections were very carefully considered by Mr. Darwin, and a reply to them appeared in the second and revised edition of his "Coral-Reefs," which was published in 1874. With characteristic frankness and freedom from prejudice, Darwin admitted that the facts brought forward by Dr.
Off Pernambuco, in Brazil, in about twelve fathoms, the bottom was covered with fragments dead and alive of a dull red Nullipora, and I infer from Roussin's chart, that a bottom of this kind extends over a wide area. On the beach, within the coral-reefs of Mauritius, vast quantities of fragments of Nulliporae were piled up.
Now to make that 3000 feet of hard rock, what must have happened? The sea-bottom must have sunk, slowly no doubt, carrying the coral-reefs down with it, 3000 feet at least. And meanwhile sand and mud, made from the wearing away of the old lands in the North must have settled down upon it.
By a study of the evidences presented by coral-reefs, raised beaches, submerged forests, and other phenomena of a similar kind, it can be shown that certain wide areas of the land and of the ocean-floor are at the present time in a state of subsidence, while other equally large areas are being upheaved.
Darwin has come, I cannot help adding that his hypothesis is perfectly satisfactory to my mind, and rises beyond a mere hypothesis into the true theory of coral-reefs." As the result of the clear exposition of the subject by Darwin, Lyell, Dana, and Jukes, the theory of coral-reefs had, by the middle of the present century, commanded the almost universal assent of both biologists and geologists.
Consequently, he was dear to the heart of the Consolidated Press, and, as a "safe" man, was sent to the beautiful harbor of Santiago to a spot where there were war-ships cleared for action, Cubans in ambush, naked marines fighting for a foothold at Guantanamo, palm- trees and coral-reefs in order that he might look for "facts."
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