Tropical island

“ More mountainous than even Haiti and Santo Domingo, the island is such an unbroken labyrinth of hills, ranges, and high peaks, of deep valleys, perpendicular slopes, and precipitous canyons, that its rugged beauty seems never-ending. That beauty, too, is enhanced by the great amount of cultivation, by the character it gains over the often uninhabited island to the westward in being everywhere peopled, by the great variety of colors that decorate it especially in this tropical spring-time of February. ”

“ For much of the way the drive was through, or close upon, the tropical forest, and the youths were more than once reminded of their excursion in Singapore, and the ride in Ceylon from Point de Galle to Colombo. On one side of the island there was a view of the ocean, while on the other the scene included the dense swamp and series of islands lying between them and the mainland, with an occasional glimpse of the mountains that form the dividing ridge between the Atlantic and Pacific. ”

“ Certainly no land beneath the skies was given a more perfect combination of mountains and rivers, forests and plains. Situated within and near the border of the northern tropical zone, the temperature of the low coast lands is that of the torrid zone, but the high interior of the island enjoys a delightful climate, and the verdure-clad hills, with the graceful palm and cocoa tree clear against the pure blue sky, may be seen at all seasons of the year. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In time our coral reef may become a beautiful tropical island fringed with waving trees and plants, and inhabited by man.
Fig. 2.—An Atoll.
Circular islands seldom form complete rings. There is generally an opening into the lake on the side most sheltered from the wind. A safe harbor in mid-ocean is thus made, in which vessels may take shelter, but it requires an expert navigator to pass the perils at its entrance. To anchor on the outer shore would be impossible. In Fig. 2 is a pretty little coral island with ships in its lagoon. ”

“ Such talk girdles the colonial world as completely as the telegraph, which has revolutionized European business here as elsewhere.
The island is far less interesting than the city. Its dense, dark jungle is broken up mainly by pepper and gambier plantations, the latter specially in new clearings. The laborers on these are Chinese, and so are the wood-cutters and sawyers, who frequent the round-topped wooded undulations. The climate is hotter and damper, to one's sensations at least, than the hottest and dampest of the tropical houses at Kew, and heat-loving insects riot. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence the surface of the tropical islands is more heated during the day than the sea that surrounds them, and cools more in the night by its greater elevation: whence in the afternoon when the lands of the tropical islands have been much heated by the sun, the air over them ascends pressed upwards by the cooler air of the incircling ocean, in the morning again the land becoming cooled more than the sea, the air over it descends by its increased gravity, and blows over the ocean near its shores. ”

“ Well, this vast island has never been really or thoroughly explored, for two reasons principally, because the inhabitants—a mixture of Papuans and aboriginal Australians—are never quite civil to white men, and because the climate is moist among the forests or tropical verdure that lies low along the shores, and fever, therefore, always ready to make a victim of the adventurer. ”

“ Like most tropical islands, and more particularly those of the Southern Pacific, they are marvellously fertile, and clothed with dense and luxuriant jungle. The coast lines are exceedingly bold and rocky, deeply indented with bays and inlets, and protected by the inevitable outer barrier of coral reefs. The climate is intensely hot, almost insupportably so at times by white people. Earthquakes are very common, and cyclones of terrific force frequently sweep over the country. ”

“ The island is botanically remarkable for its great number of peculiar species, offering in this respect a marked contrast to the poverty of the adjacent islands. The hills are covered with valuable timber, while coffee, limes, oranges, india-rubber trees, spices and all tropical fruits grow luxuriantly in the rich brown mould of the lowlands. There are some thirty streams of considerable size, besides numerous mountain torrents, and this abundance of water renders the island very fertile. ”

“ From the sea-line to the summit of the island, which is quite a thousand feet in altitude, the hills rise in terraces, but so densely clothed with cocoanut, banana, tamarind, orange, and25 other tropical trees, that one hardly credits the existence of terraces, or that hill and valley are hid beneath the unbroken surface of green. A little village lies hid in a palm-grove at the base of the hill, and in the ravine behind it bubbles up the spring of pure fresh water, that never fails, and from which all vessels touching at Panama obtain their supply. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But with its imposing groves of oak, its golden wealth of orange-trees, its odorous lanes of oleander.
its broad grazing-meadows yellow-starred with wild camomile, Grande Isle remains the prettiest island of the Gulf; and its loveliness is exceptional. For the bleakness of Grand Terre is reiterated by most of the other islands,—Caillou, Cassetete, Calumet, Wine Island, the twin Timbaliers, Gull Island, and the many islets haunted by the gray pelican,—all of which are little more than sand-bars covered with wiry grasses, prairie-cane, and scrub-timber. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the seed and fruits lying at the bottom of the sea-water we have to appeal to other agencies than to that of the currents if we wish to inquire into their means of arriving at this island. In imagination we leave the reef-lined shores for the interior, and exchange the exhilarating surroundings of a coral beach, where “the sky is always blue and the wind is always true,” for the arid conditions of an inland plain, or for the humid conditions of the forest, where the rain is incessant and the cloud-cap and mist seemingly eternal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A few of them came to grief on hidden sandbanks and coral reefs, losing their all and barely escaping with life from the cruel grip of this sunny and smiling sea; others got discouraged; and for many years the green and peaceful-looking islands guarding the entrances to the promised land kept their secret with all the merciless serenity of tropical nature. ”

“ The lagoon too is fascinating, and refreshing expeditions were made in the motor launch to study the wonders of its protecting coral reef. When on land, however, the charm of the island is somewhat dissipated. The inhabited strip round the coast, which varies from nothing up to some two miles in width, is covered with bungalows and little native properties, and is so full of coconuts and palms that all effect of the mountains is lost. ”

“ From the blue ocean rises a mass of green palms. The sunlight glows in the green. It somehow even seems to turn the sunlight green. Against the dark blue of the sea and the light blue of the sky, the sunlight seems to be drawing the green island out of the water, and the soft south wind carries the scent of flowers far out to sea. It is the greeting of the island, and we inhale it deeply.
Here was a typical coral atoll—the kind you dream about. A circular reef studded with waving palms and within the reef a lovely, placid lagoon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the centre of each island the mountains rise in craggy peaks, sometimes in the shape of pyramids or sugar-loaves, their rocky sides clothed with every variety of verdure, and enlivened here and there by cataracts falling from lofty cliffs, while the shore is washed by the white-crested waves of the Pacific breaking in foam on the coral reefs or dashing in spray on the beach. ”

“ Under the blue sky and lighted up by the vigorous rays of the tropic sun, they could see the mountain-peaks clothed in the verdure of a tropic forest, the little island set like a gem in the ocean, and, as they beheld these mountains and turned their eyes upward they could also see
They were canopied by the blue sky, so cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful that God alone was to be seen in heaven. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a flat island, ex-tending a great length from E. to W. describing the form of a crescent; and has a sand-bank joined to it, on which the surf ran very high. In the middle of the island, there is a large salt lagoon, or lake; and at the east end of it are many palm trees. We saw clouds of smoke ascend from different parts, pro-ceeding, as we apprehended, from sires kindled by the natives, and designed as signals to us. Night came on before we could discover the west end of the island ”

“ Here we lived as if in a dream, reveling in the beauty of land and sea, of trees and flowers, enjoying the hospitality for which the Islands are famous, and exploring as far as we could some of the enchanting spots of this heaven on earth.
We were pleased with our little house, with its wide veranda, or lanai, as it is called there, which we made comfortable and pretty with long wicker chairs and Chinese lanterns. Mangoes falling with a thump to the ground outside, and lizards and all sorts of harmless creatures crawling or flying about the house, helped to carry out the tropical effect. ”

“ Fritz and I ascended one of these hills, on which a few pines and broom were growing, and perceived beyond them a barren tract, stretching to the sea, where the coral reefs rose to the level of the water, and appeared to extend far into the sea. Any navigators, sailing along these shores, would pronounce the island inaccessible and entirely barren. This is not the fact; the grass is very thick, and the trees of noble growth ”

“ We go across the sands amid piles of seaweed, picking up lovely trophies of the deep in mother-of-pearl and pink shells, until we reach the black wooden torii at the base of the island. What a picturesque entry into the island it is, for we walk through the quaintest and narrowest village street, where the upper stories of the houses nearly meet, and where below, there is that strange medley of the every-day life of a people carried on in full view of the public eye. Up we climb, pass the shops full of shells, corals and marine curiosities, until we reach many winding flights of mossy steps. ”