Sea Islands

“ Other islands have one house and barn on them, this sole family being lords and rulers of all the land which the sea girds. The owner of such an island must have a peculiar sense of property and lordship; he must feel more like his own master and his own man than other people can. Other islands, perhaps high, precipitous, black bluffs, are crowned with a white light-house, whence, as evening comes on, twinkles a star across the melancholy deep,—seen by vessels coming on the coast, seen from the mainland, seen from island to island. ”

“ A precipitous path leads to the top of the island, where the people, with their habitations, a few sheep, and their little church, remain two thousand feet above the ocean. The islands are basaltic, like Fingal’s Cave and the Giant’s Causeway; but, instead of being one or two hundred feet in height, rise like immense columns, nearly half a mile above the sea. The inhabitants draw their entire subsistence from the ocean and the cliffs, catching codfish and killing sea-birds, myriads of which haunt the rocks of their sea-girt shores. The sea-fowl furnish large quantities of feathers. ”

“ When corallines (as they are called) set about building an island, they lay the foundation on the top of a submarine mountain. The ordinary islands of the sea are neither more nor less than the tops of those mountains which rise from the bottom of the sea and project above the surface. Some of these sea-mountains rise high above the surface and form large islands; some only peep, so to speak, out of the waves, thus forming small islands; others again do not rise to the surface at all—their highest peaks being several feet below the level of the ocean. ”

“ Looking off to sea, the eye is everywhere intercepted by islands or sunken ledges belted with surf. They have such names as Satan, Roaring Bull, Great and Little Misery, Great and Little Haste, Cut-throat Ledge, the Brimbles, Cat Island, and the like. Each would have a story, if it were challenged, how it came by its name. The number of these islands is something surprising. In fact they appear like a system, connecting the craggy promontory of Marblehead with the cape side. At some time the sea must have burst through this rocky barrier, carrying all before its resistless onset. ”

“ That little island, which is nearly circular, is about 25,000 toises in diameter, and is situated in 2° 18′ S. lat., and 145° 46′ E. long. It is extremely populous; for we saw about three hundred of its inhabitants.
The white appearance of several places of the island, where fractures discovered the strata, gave me reason to believe, that its base is of a calcareous nature, like the greater part of the South Sea islands. ”

“ From Cape Elizabeth on the west to Quoddy Head on the east, there are over a thousand large and small islands, nearly all of which are of bold formation and most of them wholly or in part covered with a growth of spruce and fir. The shores of these islands, as well as the mainland, are mainly rock-ribbed, with many high cliffs, at the foot of which the ocean surges beat unceasingly. Deep fissures and sea caverns into which the green water, changed to yeasty foam, ever churns and rushes by day and night, are common; and when storms arise it bellows and roars like an angry bull. ”

“ Oceanic islands are due to various causes. It is a question whether the numberless islands of the Malay Archipelago should be regarded as continental or oceanic, but there is no doubt that the South Sea islands scattered over a portion of the Pacific belong to the oceanic group. The ocean floor is by no means a level plain, but rises and falls in mounds, eminences and basins towards the surface. ”

“ This little creature, which has scarce sensation enough to distinguish it from a plant, builds up a rocky structure from the bottom of a sea too deep to be measured by human art, till it readies the surface, and offers a firm basis for the residence of man! The number of these low islands is very great, and we are far from being acquainted with them all. In the whole extent of the Pacific Ocean, between the tropics, they are to be met with; however, they are remarkably frequent for the space of ten or fifteen degrees to the eastward of the Society Islands. ”

“ But the islands, though in sight of each other, are separated by deep arms of the sea, in most cases wider than the British Channel, and there is no reason to suppose that they have at any former period been continuously united. The currents of the sea are rapid and sweep across the archipelago, and gales of wind are extraordinarily rare; so that the islands are far more effectually separated from each other than they appear to be on a map. ”

“ Since my return from the Upper Amazons to Pará, I have made an examination of some of the harbor islands, and also of parts of the coast, and have satisfied myself that, with the exception of a few small, low islands, never rising above the sea-level, and composed of alluvial deposit, they are portions of the mainland detached from it, partly by the action of the river itself, and partly by the encroachment of the ocean. In fact the sea is eating away the land much faster than the river can build it up. ”

“ On the morning of the 29th of September, which was the last of our remaining in Comptroller's Bay, I made another excursion to the Typee Bay, taking with me the chief of the Happahs, who was very anxious to go. I wondered at this, as the tribes evinced so much dislike to each other; but afterwards saw, in my intercourse with the natives of the South Sea Islands, that uncivilized men are capable of as much duplicity towards each other as the educated and refined. ”

“ The title of the book, “Isles of the Sea,” indicates the character of the foreign travel in which the students of the institution were engaged; and in the pursuit of knowledge they visit the Madeira Islands, the Canaries, the Azores, the Bermudas, and one vessel of the fleet extends its cruise to the Cape Verd Islands. As in its predecessors, the professor of geography and history has something to say about each of the islands visited, and the surgeon and sanitary officer continues to enlighten the young gentlemen who seek his companionship in their rambles on shore. ”

“ Those islands which have more length than breadth, and are opposed in their greatest extent to the winds and waves, are richer in fruitful islets than those whose situation is not so adapted to a quick formation. In the large island-chains, there are always some single islets which have the appearance of high land; these lie upon an angle projecting into the sea, are exposed to the surf upon two sides, consist therefore almost entirely of large blocks of coral, and are destitute of smaller fragments of shells and coral sand to fill up the intervals. ”

“ The Sea about them in the neighbourhood of which they always live supplys them with vast variety of fish better than what is generaly met with between the tropicks, but these they get not without some trouble; every one desires to have them and there is not enough for all, tho while we remaind in these seas we saw above species more perhaps than our own Island can boast of. I speak now only of what is more properly calld Fish ”

“ The islands are very quiet. One sees them lying about, clothed in their dark garments of leaves, in a great hush of silver and azure, where the sea without murmurs meets the sky in a ring of magic stillness. ”

“ The Inlet is studded with islands. Some of these, with the facilities for fishing by which they are surrounded, afford ample space for comfortable homes to even more dainty people than the hard-working and hybrid race who, in the Northern and Western Islands of Scotland, are content, or compelled, to dwell on a patch of peatmoss, and to obtain a precarious livelihood from the resources of a rougher sea. Others are mere miniature islets, or mammoth flower-pots, such as lend a quaint charm to the scenery of the Thousand Islands of the St Lawrence. ”

“ At meridian, we hove to, and put off in two boats. Having passed to leeward of the island, we crossed a drowned reef, that extended as far as the eye could reach to the N.W., when we found ourselves in an inland sea, which was extensive and quite smooth. That part of the island where we landed was about five miles long, and a quarter of a mile wide. ”

“ All the Islands I have seen are very populous all along the sea coast, where are generaly large flats coverd with a vast many breadfruit and Cocoa nut trees. Here are houses almost every 50 yards with their little plantations of Plantains, the tree that makes their cloth etc. ”

“ For the Enchanted Island of the west coast is not one of those ordinary, humdrum islands that rise out of the sea in a night, and then, having come, settle down to business on scientific principles, and devote their attention to the collection of soil for the use of plants and animals. ”

“ I have ascertained, and chiefly from the writings of Cook, Kotzebue, Bellinghausen, Duperrey, Beechey, and Lutké, regarding the Pacific; and from Moresby [2] with respect to the Indian Ocean, that in the following cases the term “low island” strictly means land of the height commonly attained by matter thrown up by the winds and the waves of an open sea. ”

“ There are not wanting signs that the sea has encroached a great deal on the land, and that it is still doing so. In the first place the island is not three miles long, as shown on the chart; its length cannot exceed one mile and a half. The shores, again, are far more irregular in shape, the outer islands and shoals more numerous, than the chart indicates. Perhaps these last have been cut off the island by the sea since the survey. We perceived that the sea was breaking all round the island on far projecting promontories and shallow reefs ”

“ There is every reason to believe, however, that some of the islands are really of contemporaneous formation with the adjacent parts of the continent, from which they have been disjoined by the incursions of the sea, or by convulsions of nature, and it is probably in those islands which contain primitive rocks, that we are chiefly to look for a confirmation of this supposition. ”

“ Two or three large sail canoes came from a great distance over the inland sea, and approached us without fear. The natives told us that they had never seen white men before.
The captain landed upon a different island from myself, and the natives, having fled from their habitations as they did upon the island where I landed, he sent a few old people, that were found, commanding all the inhabitants to return to their homes, and, fearing his displeasure, in a few minutes their huts were occupied in the same manner as though the white-faced strangers had not appeared amongst them. ”

“ But in the case of the many cliff-bounded islands, for instance in some of the Canary Islands and of Madeira, round which the inclination of the strata shows that the land once extended far into the depths of the sea, where there is no apparent means of hard rock being worn away—are we to suppose that all these islands have slowly subsided? ”

“ Every one of course knows that there are three hundred and sixty-five of these islands, all lying within twenty miles in length and three in breadth. They are surrounded too by reefs, or rocks hidden by water, which stretch out into the sea in some places for eight or ten miles, making the navigation very difficult ”

“ The chart of this part (entitled Dundas Islands) , presents an extraordinary appearance; the coast of the mainland is quite straight and it is fronted at the average distance of two miles, by exceedingly narrow, straight islets, fringed with reefs. Within the chain of islets, there are extensive tidal flats and muddy bays, into which many rivers enter; the depths of these spaces varies from one to four fathoms—the latter depth not being common, and about twelve feet the average. Outside the chain of islets, the sea, at the distance of a mile, varies in depth from eight to fifteen fathoms. ”

“ On the Gulf side of these islands you may observe that the trees—when there are any trees—all bend away from the sea; and, even of bright, hot days when the wind sleeps, there is something grotesquely pathetic in their look of agonized terror. A group of oaks at Grande Isle I remember as especially suggestive: five stooping silhouettes in line against the horizon, like fleeing women with streaming garments and wind-blown hair,—bowing grievously and thrusting out arms desperately northward as to save themselves from falling. ”

“ In front of us lay a smooth sandy beach, beyond which rose gradually a high wooded country, and behind us was the sea, studded with numerous islands of every variety of form. ”

“ These are coral islands, slowly raised, but continuous, created by the daily work of polypi. Then this new island will be joined later on to the neighboring groups, and a fifth continent will stretch from New Zealand and New Caledonia, and from thence to the Marquesas.
One day, when I was suggesting this theory to Captain Nemo, he replied coldly:
"The earth does not want new continents, but new men." ”

“ Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves, and Conanicut and Newport hear each other's fog-horns. But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. ”

“ The shallow sea that foams and murmurs on the shores of the thousand islands, big and little, which make up the Malay Archipelago has been for centuries the scene of adventurous undertakings. ”