Water is usually to be found in sufficient quantities for the use of the natives, although the land is so low and flat. They dig wells five to ten feet deep in any part of the dry islets, and generally obtain a constant supply. These wells are sometimes fenced around with special care; and the houses of the villages, as at Fakaafo, are often clustered about them. On Aratica (Carlshoff) there is a watering-place 50 feet in diameter, from which our vessels in a few hours obtained 390 gallons. The Tarawan Islands are generally provided with a supply sufficient for bathing, and each native takes his morning bath in fresh water, esteemed by them a great luxury.
The only source of this water is the rains, which, percolating through the loose surface, settle upon the hardened coral rock that forms the basis of the island. As the soil is white, or nearly so, it receives heat but slowly, and there is consequently but little evaporation of the water that is once absorbed.
These islands, moreover, enclose ports of great extent, many admitting even the largest class of vessels; and the same lagoons are the pearl fisheries of the Pacific.
An occasional log drifts to their shores; and at some of the more isolated atolls, where the natives are ignorant of any land but the spot they inhabit; they are deemed direct gifts from a propitiated deity. These drift-logs were noticed by Kotzebue, at the Marshall Islands, and he remarked also that they often brought stones in their roots. Similar facts were observed by us at the Tarawan group, and also at Enderby's Island, and elsewhere.
The stones at the Tarawan Islands, as far as we could learn, are generally basaltic, and they are highly valued for whetstones, pestles, and hatchets. The logs are claimed by the chiefs for canoes. Some of the logs on Enderby's Island were forty feet long, and four in diameter.
Fragments of pumice and resin are transported by the waves to the Tarawan Islands. We were informed that the pumice was gathered from the shores by the women, and pounded up to fertilize the soil of their taro patches; and it is so common, that one woman will pick up a peck in a day. Pumice was also met with at Fakaafo. Volcanic ashes are sometimes distributed over these islands, through the atmosphere; and in this manner the soil of the Tonga Islands is improved, and in some places it has received a reddish colour.
The officers of the “Vincennes” observed several large masses of compact and cellular basalt on Rose Island, a few degrees east of Samoa: they lie two hundred yards inside of the line of breakers. The island is uninhabited, and the origin of the stories is doubtful; they may have been brought there by roots of trees, or perhaps by some canoe.
Notwithstanding the great number of coral islands in the Paumotu Archipelago, the botanist finds there, as Dr Pickering informs me, only twenty-eight or twenty-nine native species of plants. The following are the most common of them: Portulacca, two species; Scævola Konigii. Pisonia? one species; Tournefortia sericea; Pandanus odoratissimus; Lepidium, one species; Euphorbia, one species; Morinda citrifolia; Bœrhavia, two species; Cassytha, one species; Heliotropium prostratum, Pemphis acidula, Guettarda speciosa, Triumphetta procumbens, Sauriana maritima; Convolvulus, one species; Urtica, one or two species; Asplenium nidus; Achyranthus, one species; a species of grass. One or two rubiaceous shrubs. Polypodium.
On Rose Island, Dr Pickering found only the Pisonia and a Portulacca. The Triumphetta procumbens, a creeping plant, takes root, like the Portulacca, in the most barren sands, and is very common. The Tournefortia and Scævola are also among the earliest species. The Pisonia, a tree of handsome foliage, the Pandanus, or screw-pine, and the cocoa-nut (always an introduced species), constitute the larger part of the forests. In the Marshall group, where the vegetation is more varied, Chamisso observed fifty-two native plants, and, in a few instances, the banana, taro, and bread-fruit.
The language of the natives indicates their poverty, as well as the limited productions and unvarying features of the land. All words, like those for mountain, hill, river, and many of the implements of their ancestors, as well as the trees and other vegetation of the land from which they are derived, are lost to them; and as words are but signs for ideas, they have fallen off in general intelligence. It would be an interesting inquiry for the philosopher, to what extent a race of men, placed in such circumstances, are capable of mental improvement. Perhaps the query might be best answered by another: How many of the various arts of civilized life could exist in a land where shells are the only cutting instruments? The plants, in all but twenty-nine in number,—but a single mineral,—quadrupeds, none, with the exception of foreign mice,—fresh water barely enough for household purposes,—no streams, nor mountains, nor hills! How much of the poetry or literature of Europe would be intelligible to persons whose ideas had expanded only to the limits of a coral island,—who had never conceived of a surface of land above half a mile in breadth, of a slope higher than a beach, of a change of seasons beyond a variation in the prevalence of rains? What elevation in morals should be expected upon a contracted islet, so readily overpeopled that threatened starvation drives to infanticide, and tends to cultivate the extremest selfishness? Assuredly, there is not a more unfavourable spot for moral or intellectual development in the wide world than the Coral Island, with all its beauty of grove and lake.