Astræa.
We are astonished when travellers tell us of the vast extent of certain ancient ruins; but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these when compared with the piles of stone accumulated in the course of ages by these minute, and individually so puny architects! The history of the formation of coral-reefs is no less wonderful than their extent. They have been divided, according to their geological character, into three classes. The first fringes the shores of continents or islands (shore-reefs); the second, rising from a deep ocean, at a greater distance from the land, encircles an island, or stretches like a barrier along the coast (encircling-reefs, barrier-reefs); the third, enclosing a lagoon, forms a ring or annular breakwater round an interior lake (atolls, or lagoon-islands).
Stone Corals.
Many of the high rocky islands of the Pacific lie, like a picture in its frame, in the middle of a lagoon encircled by a reef. A fringe of low alluvial land in these cases generally surrounds the base of the mountains; a girdle of palm-trees, backed by abrupt heights, and fronted by a lake of smooth water, only separated from the deep blue ocean by the breakers roaring against the encircling reef; such, for instance, is the scenery of Tahiti, so justly named "the queen of islands." But the encircling reefs are often at a much greater distance from the shore. Thus in New Caledonia they extend no less than 140 miles beyond the island.
As an example of barrier-reefs, I shall cite that which fronts the north-east coast of Australia. It is described by Flinders as having a length of nearly a thousand miles, and as running parallel to the shore at a distance of between twenty and thirty miles from it, and in some parts even of fifty and seventy. The great arm of the sea thus inclosed, has a usual depth of between ten and twenty fathoms. This probably is both the grandest and most extraordinary reef now existing in any part of the world.
Stone Corals.
The atolls, or lagoon-islands, are numerously scattered over the face of the tropical ocean. The Marshall and Caroline islands, the Paumotic group, the Maldives and Lacadives, and many other groups or solitary islets of the Pacific or Indian Ocean, are entirely built up of coral; every single atom, from the smallest particle to large fragments of rock, bearing the stamp of having been subjected to the power of organic arrangement. A narrow rim of coral-reef, generally but a few hundred yards wide, stretches around the enclosed waters. When a lagoon-island is first seen from the deck of a vessel, only a series of dark points is descried just above the horizon. Shortly after, the points enlarge into the plumed tops of cocoa-nut trees, and a line of green, interrupted at intervals, is traced along the water's surface.