Oceanic island

“ Darwin has shown us how we may determine in almost every case, whether an island has ever been connected with a continent or larger land, by the presence or absence of terrestrial Mammalia and reptiles. What he terms "oceanic islands" possess neither of these groups of animals, though they may have a luxuriant vegetation, and a fair number of birds, insects, and landshells; and we therefore conclude that they have originated in mid-ocean, and have never been connected with the nearest masses of land. St. Helena, Madeira, and New Zealand are examples of oceanic islands. ”

“ In all cases where the continental islands occur, they are connected with the mainland by a continental shelf, and their structure is essentially that of the mainland. The islands off the west coast of Scotland and the Isles of Man and Wight have this relation to Britain, while Britain and Ireland have a similar relation to the continent of Europe. The north-east coast of Australia furnishes similar examples, but in addition to these in that locality there are true oceanic islands near the mainland, formed by the growth of the Great Barrier coral reef. ”

“ Its innumerable islands are the chief feature of the Pacific Ocean. The continental islands include the Aleutian, Kurile, Japan, and Philippine Islands, and the archipelago between the Malay Peninsula and Australia; the Oceanic Islands include countless groups, volcanic and coral, chiefly in the southern hemisphere, between the Sandwich Islands and New Zealand. Commerce on the Pacific Ocean is only beginning, but will increase vastly with the extension of the United States westward, the colonisation of Australia, and the opening of Chinese and Japanese ports. ”

“ The island is of considerable extent, and though on the windward or eastern side its appearance is uninviting in the extreme, and the fierce oceanic currents that for ever sweep in mighty eddies around its shores render approach to it difficult and sometimes dangerous, it has yet afforded succour to many an exhausted and sea-worn shipwrecked crew who have reached it in boats. ”

“ The ocean broke angrily against the stern basalt, or entered these huge pits and sprang out of them in welling masses of foam and spray. An iron-bound coast that defied the heart, or any sentiment but wonder and fear. Boulders as big as ships were half attached to the precipices or lay near-by to attest the continuous devouring of the land by the sea. Coming from Tahiti, with its beautiful reefs and beaches, and the clouds like wreaths of reva-reva, with cocoanut-palms and breadfruit-trees and bananas covering all the land, this Easter Island seemed terribly bare and forbidding. ”

“ Though there is no pass, the surf at high tide breaches over the gaps between the islands. The largest island is only a mile and a half long, and none of them are more than half a mile across. Dotted about the surface of the lagoon are a number of motu—tiny islets—each with its flock of sea fowl, its clump of palms, and shining beach of coral sand. Set in a lonely stretch of the Pacific, the place is almost cut off from communication with the outside world; twice or three times in the course of a year a trading schooner calls to leave supplies and take off copra. ”

“ There is only one spot, about nine leagues to the north of the island, and where three rocks are joined by a reef, that shelter is afforded for a boat, and there one can effect a landing, but the ground is everywhere rocky. Further from the coast there is a raised ground, tolerably level, but of a dry and barren aspect, except near the island, where there is some foliage. In nearly thirty-two degrees south latitude there is a large island, nearly three leagues from the continent, with some rather high mountains, covered with wood and thickets, which render it difficult to pass across. ”

“ The islands of the North-East coast of Australia hitherto and subsequently visited during the survey, afford all the gradations between the simplest form of a sandbank upon a coral reef scantily covered with grass, a few creeping plants and stunted bushes on one hand--and on the other a high, rocky, well-wooded island with an undulating succession of hills and valleys. ”

“ The aurora light, which constantly brightens and lessens in this strange world, was now shining gloriously, and I set forth to explore the island. The beach was of fine sand all the way. The water was smooth, and shut in on every side by an outer reef against which the sea-waves broke incessantly. As I walked I soon perceived what the island was; for I had often seen such places before in the South Pacific. It was, in fact, a coral islet, with a reef of rocks encircling it on every side. The vegetation, however, was unlike anything in the world beyond ”

“ There are atoll-islands where ships can enter, through some break in the ring, into the inner circle. They find themselves in a perfect harbor, in a sheltered lake which no wave can ever enter, yet deep enough and wide enough to hold all the navies of the world. Round about on every side there are the dazzling beaches which are composed of coral sand, and crowning these there is the peaceful cocoanut-palm, and a lower jungle of dense tropical vegetation. On landing and exploring the woods and shores, nothing can be seen but coral. The whole island is a ring of this purely marine product ”

“ From a distance, all the islands of the Archipelago appear to rise to about the same height,—between 500 and 600 feet—presenting a fairly level sky-line from north to south, and with the exception of East Island, which shows a white sandy beach, all seem fringed with thickets of mangroves. ”

“ Ocean Island, lat. 0° 50′ south, long. 168° east.
A fantastic, lonely, forbidding-looking spot. Circular in form, with rounded summit, and a cruel upheaved coral coast, split up into ravines running deep into the land. Here and there, on ledges overlooking the sea, are perched tiny villages, inhabited by as fierce and intractable a race [Pg 122] of Malayo-Polynesians as ever lacerated each other's bodies with sharks'-tooth daggers, after the mad drunkenness produced by sour toddy. ”

“ The group lies between the south end of New Ireland and the north end of the great Bougainville Island in the Solomon Archipelago, and consists of six low, well-wooded and fertile islands, enclosed within a barrier reef, forming a noble atoll, almost circular in shape. All the islands are thickly populated at the present day by natives, who are peaceable enough, and engage in bêche-de-mer and pearl-shell fishing. ”

“ Having completed the survey of the coasts and islands of the South American continent, the Beagle sailed across the wide Pacific to Tahiti, New Zealand, and Australia, in order to carry out the chain of chronometrical measurements round the world. From Australasia a run was then made for Keeling or Cocos Island in the Indian Ocean. This lonely island, 600 miles from the coast of Sumatra, is an atoll, or lagoon island. The land is entirely composed of fragments of coral. ”

“ Like those of the harbor of Pará, all these islands have the same geological structure as the continent, and were evidently continuous with it at some former period. All the rocky islands along the coast of Maine and Massachusetts exhibit the glacial traces wherever their surfaces are exposed by the washing away of the drift; and where the drift remains, its character shows that it was once continuous from one island to another, and from all the islands to the mainland. ”

“ Some of the atolls, in the larger archipelagoes, stand so near to each other, and have such an evident relationship in form, that they compose little sub-groups: in the Caroline Archipelago, one such sub-group consists of Pouynipete, a lofty island encircled by a barrier-reef, and separated by a channel only four miles and a half wide from Andeema atoll, with a second atoll a little further off. In all these respects an examination of a series of charts will show how perfectly groups of atolls resemble groups of common islands. ”

“ For the quantity of fish that might be procured would be sufficient, and the people might roam about unmolested by the petulance of any inhabitants.
The nine or ten low islets, comprehended under the name of Palmerston's Island, may be reckoned the heads or summits of the reef of coral rock that connects them together, covered only with a thin coat of sand, yet clothed, as already observed, with trees and plants, most of which are of the same sorts that are found on the low grounds of the high islands of this ocean. ”

“ He led the way toward the wreck, Floyd and Isbel following.
The coral islands of the Pacific may be roughly divided into two classes: compound islands—that is to say, islands made of solid land and surrounded by a coral ring or breakwater, and simple islands or atolls—that is, simple rings of coral inclosing lagoons.
Then we have occasionally a third variety, an atoll island in whose lagoon one finds several islets. ”

“ All the islands are very rugged in surface—steep and high cliffs, deep valleys and canyons, and stupendous craters that have vomited great floods of lava. A little way from shore the Pacific has some of its deepest beds. If the sea could be removed the island of Hawaii would be a great dome five miles high.
The coral polyps have added their mite to the building of these islands, and coral reefs are the foundation of the coast plain that surrounds a considerable part of the girth of each. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I named it Half-way Island. It is scarcely more than a mile in circumference, but appears to be increasing both in elevation and extent. At no very distant period of time, it was one of those banks produced by the washing up of sand and broken coral, of which most reefs afford instances, and those of Torres' Strait a great many. These banks are in different stages of progress: some, like this, are become islands, but not yet habitable; some are above high-water mark, but destitute of vegetation; whilst others are overflowed with every returning tide. ”

“ The southern group consists of seven or eight islands and islets on the atoll, which is the skeleton of what some day, according to the history of coral reefs, will be a continuous island. North Keeling has no harbor, is seldom visited, and is of no importance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A NORTH PACIFIC LAGOON ISLAND
Two degrees north of the Equator, and midway between the Hawaiian Islands and fair, green Tahiti, is the largest and most important of the many equatorial isolated lagoon islands which, from 10 deg. N. to 10 deg. S., are dispersed over 40 deg. of longitude. The original native name of this island has long been lost, and by that given to it by Captain Cook one hundred and twenty years ago it is now known to Pacific navigators—Christmas Island. ”

“ The small Islands of this groupe are frequently only separated by what are sometimes denominated causeways, or in other words, connected by reefs of coral, extending from the extreme point of one Island and connecting it with another. These reefs are nearly dry at low water, and the communication is easily kept up between them by the natives on foot. ”

“ Turning to more scientific evidence, we find that the Islanders have always been judged to be of Polynesian race, as indeed would naturally be expected from the easterly position of the island in the Pacific Ocean. ”

“ The highest degree of intimacy is developed in that vast island-strewn stretch of the Pacific constituting Oceanica.550 Here where a mild climate enables the boatman race to make a companion of the deep, where every landscape is a seascape, where every diplomatic visit or war campaign, every trading journey or search for new coco-palm plantation means a voyage beyond the narrow confines of the home island, there dwells a race whose splendid chest and arm muscles were developed in the gymnasium of the sea ”

“ It is dangerous to land there, on account of the reefs of rock along the coast; and, moreover, one sees many rocks between the continent and this island, and also a smaller island somewhat to the south. This large island, to which I have not chosen to give a name myself, thinking it right to leave the choice of name to the governor-general, may be seen from the sea at seven or eight leagues distance on a clear day. I presume that both fresh water and wood will be found there in abundance, though not without considerable trouble. ”

“ Twenty miles in circumference, it is surrounded by dozens of smaller islands, each in turn surrounded by its own coral reefs. From our deck, I could count eight of these small islands, some only a few acres, others about three or four miles around, all covered, save for the sandy beach, with a thick green jungle of tropical trees. We were twenty-five miles from Raiatea and one thousand miles from Samoa.
Only three persons on the island could speak English. There were half a dozen frame huts; all the rest were of grass, or bamboo. The natives wore nothing but the red pareus, or breech-clouts. ”