natives, by a horrible process, take the shell from the back of the
living turtle. "It is covered with burning charcoal, which causes the
outer shell to curl upwards, it is then forced off with a knife, and
before it becomes cold flattened between boards. After this barbarous
process the animal is suffered to regain its native element, where,
after a certain time, a new shell is formed; it is, however, too thin
to be of any service, and the animal always appears languishing and
sickly."
When we arrived at the head of the lagoon, we crossed a narrow islet,
and found a great surf breaking on the windward coast. I can hardly
explain the reason, but there is to my mind much grandeur in the view
of the outer shores of these lagoon-islands. There is a simplicity in
the barrier-like beach, the margin of green bushes and tall cocoa-nuts,
the solid flat of dead coral-rock, strewed here and there with great
loose fragments, and the line of furious breakers, all rounding away
towards either hand. The ocean throwing its waters over the broad reef
appears an invincible, all-powerful enemy; yet we see it resisted, and
even conquered, by means which at first seem most weak and inefficient.
It is not that the ocean spares the rock of coral; the great fragments
scattered over the reef, and heaped on the beach, whence the tall
cocoa-nut springs, plainly bespeak the unrelenting power of the waves.
Nor are any periods of repose granted. The long swell caused by the
gentle but steady action of the trade-wind, always blowing in one
direction over a wide area, causes breakers, almost equalling in force
those during a gale of wind in the temperate regions, and which never
cease to rage. It is impossible to behold these waves without feeling
a conviction that an island, though built of the hardest rock, let it
be porphyry, granite, or quartz, would ultimately yield and be
demolished by such an irresistible power. Yet these low, insignificant
coral-islets stand and are victorious: for here another power, as an
antagonist, takes part in the contest. The organic forces separate the
atoms of carbonate of lime, one by one, from the foaming breakers, and
unite them into a symmetrical structure. Let the hurricane tear up its
thousand huge fragments; yet what will that tell against the
accumulated labour of myriads of architects at work night and day,
month after month? Thus do we see the soft and gelatinous body of a
polypus, through the agency of the vital laws, conquering the great
mechanical power of the waves of an ocean which neither the art of man
nor the inanimate works of nature could successfully resist.
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