The Beauties of Nature, and the Wonders of the World We Live In Part 19

Thirdly, Those which owe their origin to the growth of Coral reefs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 49.--Whitsunday Island.]

Coral islands are especially numerous in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, where there are innumerable islets, in the form of rings, or which together form rings, the rings themselves being sometimes made up of ringlets. These "atolls" contain a circular basin of yellowish green, clear, shallow water, while outside is the dark blue deep water of the Ocean. The islands themselves are quite low, with a beach of white sand rising but a few feet above the level of the water, and bear generally groups of tufted Cocoa Palms.

It used to be supposed that these were the summits of submarine volcanoes on which the coral had grown. But as the reef-making coral does not live at greater depths than about twenty-five fathoms, the immense number of these reefs formed an almost insuperable objection to this theory. The Laccadives and Maldives for instance--meaning literally the "lac of or 100,000 islands," and the "thousand islands"--are a series of such atolls, and it was impossible to imagine so great a number of craters, all so nearly of the same alt.i.tude.

In shallow tracts of sea, coral reefs no doubt tend to a.s.sume the well-known circular form, but the difficulty was to account for the numerous atolls which rise to the surface from the abysses of the ocean, while the coral-forming zoophytes can only live near the surface.

Darwin showed that so far from the ring of corals resting on a corresponding ridge of rocks, the lagoons, on the contrary, now occupy the place which was once the highest land. He pointed out that some lagoons, as for instance that of Vanikoro, contain an island in the middle; while other islands, such as Tahiti, are surrounded by a margin of smooth water separated from the ocean by a coral reef. Now if we suppose that Tahiti were to sink slowly it would gradually approximate to the condition of Vanikoro; and if Vanikoro gradually sank, the central island would disappear, while on the contrary the growth of the coral might neutralise the subsidence of the reef, so that we should have simply an atoll with its lagoon. The same considerations explain the origin of the "barrier reefs," such as that which runs for nearly a thousand miles, along the north-east coast of Australia. Thus Darwin's theory explains the form and the approximate ident.i.ty of alt.i.tude of these coral islands. But it does more than this, because it shows that there are great areas in process of subsidence, which though slow, is of great importance in physical geography.

The lagoon islands have received much attention; which "is not surprising, for every one must be struck with astonishment, when he first beholds one of these vast rings of coral-rock, often many leagues in diameter, here and there surmounted by a low verdant island with dazzling white sh.o.r.es, bathed on the outside by the foaming breakers of the ocean, and on the inside surrounding a calm expanse of water, which, from reflection is generally of a bright but pale green colour. The naturalist will feel this astonishment more deeply after having examined the soft and almost gelatinous bodies of these apparently insignificant coral-polypifers, and when he knows that the solid reef increases only on the outer edge, which day and night is lashed by the breakers of an ocean never at rest. Well did Francois Pyrard de Laval, in the year 1605 exclaim, 'C'est une merveille de voir chacun de ces atollons, environne d'un grand banc de pierre tout autour, n'y ayant point d'artifice humain.'"[62]

Of the enchanting beauty of the coral beds themselves we are a.s.sured that language conveys no adequate idea. "There were corals," says Prof.

Ball, "which, in their living state, are of many shades of fawn, buff, pink, and blue, while some were tipped with a magenta-like bloom.

Sponges which looked as hard as stone spread over wide areas, while sprays of coralline added their graceful forms to the picture. Through the vistas so formed, golden-banded and metallic-blue fish meandered, while on the patches of sand here and there Holothurias and various mollusca and crustaceans might be seen slowly crawling."

Abercromby also gives a very graphic description of a Coral reef. "As we approached," he says, "the roaring surf on the outside, fingery lumps of beautiful live coral began to appear of the palest lavender-blue colour; and when at last we were almost within the spray, the whole floor was one ma.s.s of living branches of coral.

"But it is only when venturing as far as is prudent into the water, over the outward edge of the great sea wall, that the true character of the reef and all the beauties of the ocean can be really seen. After walking over a flat uninteresting tract of nearly bare rock, you look down and see a steep irregular wall, expanding deeper into the ocean than the eye can follow, and broken into lovely grottoes and holes and ca.n.a.ls, through which small resplendent fish of the brightest blue or gold flit fitfully between the lumps of coral. The sides of these natural grottoes are entirely covered with endless forms of tender-coloured coral, but all beautiful, and all more or less of the fingery or branching species, known as madrepores. It is really impossible to draw or describe the sight, which must be taken with all its surroundings as adjuncts."[63]

The vegetation of these fairy lands is also very lovely; the Coral tree (Erythrina) with light green leaves and bunches of scarlet blossoms, the Cocoa-nut always beautiful, the breadfruit, the graceful tree ferns, the Barringtonia, with large pink and white flowers, several species of Convolvulus, and many others unknown to us even by name.

THE SOUTHERN SKIES

In considering these exquisite scenes, the beauty of the Southern skies must not be omitted. "From the time we entered the torrid zone," says Humboldt, "we were never wearied with admiring, every night, the beauty of the southern sky, which, as we advanced towards the south, opened new constellations to our view. We feel an indescribable sensation, when, on approaching the equator, and particularly on pa.s.sing from one hemisphere to the other, we see those stars which we have contemplated from our infancy, progressively sink, and finally disappear. Nothing awakens in the traveller a livelier remembrance of the immense distance by which he is separated from his country, than the aspect of an unknown firmament.

The grouping of the stars of the first magnitude, some scattered nebulae rivalling in splendour the milky way, and tracts of s.p.a.ce remarkable for their extreme blackness, give a particular physiognomy to the southern sky. This sight fills with admiration even those, who, uninstructed in the branches of accurate science, feel the same emotions of delight in the contemplation of the heavenly vault, as in the view of a beautiful landscape, or a majestic river. A traveller has no need of being a botanist to recognise the torrid zone on the mere aspect of its vegetation; and, without having acquired any notion of astronomy, he feels he is not in Europe, when he sees the immense constellation of the s.h.i.+p, or the phosph.o.r.escent clouds of Magellan, arise on the horizon.

The heaven and the earth, in the equinoctial regions, a.s.sume an exotic character."

"The sunsets in the Eastern Archipelago," says H. O. Forbes,[64] "were scenes to be remembered for a lifetime. The tall cones of Sibissie and Krakatoa rose dark purple out of an unruffled golden sea, which stretched away to the south-west, where the sun went down; over the horizon gray fleecy clouds lay in banks and streaks, above them pale blue lanes of sky, alternating with orange bands, which higher up gave place to an expanse of red stretching round the whole heavens.

Gradually as the sun retreated deeper and deeper, the sky became a marvellous golden curtain, in front of which the gray clouds coiled themselves into weird forms before dissolving into s.p.a.ce...."

THE POLES

The Arctic and Antarctic regions have always exercised a peculiar fascination over the human mind. Until now every attempt to reach the North Pole has failed, and the South has proved even more inaccessible.

In the north, Parry all but reached lat. 83; in the south no one has penetrated beyond lat. 71.11. And yet, while no one can say what there may be round the North Pole, and some still imagine that open water might be found there, we can picture to ourselves the extreme South with somewhat more confidence.

Whenever s.h.i.+ps have sailed southwards, except at a few places where land has been met with, they have come at last to a wall of ice, from fifty to four hundred feet high. In those regions it snows, if not incessantly, at least very frequently, and the snow melts but little. As far as the eye can reach nothing is to be seen but snow. Now this snow must gradually acc.u.mulate, and solidify into ice, until it attains such a slope that it will move forward as a glacier. The enormous Icebergs of the Southern Ocean, moreover, show that it does so, and that the snow of the extreme south, after condensing into ice, moves slowly outward and at length forms a wall of ice, from which Icebergs, from time to time, break away. We do not exactly know what, under such circ.u.mstances, the slope would be; but Mr. Croll points out that if we take it at only half a degree, and this seems quite a minimum, the Ice cap at the South Pole must be no less than twelve miles in thickness. It is indeed probably even more, for some of the Southern tabular icebergs attain a height of eight hundred, or even a thousand feet above water, indicating a total thickness of the ice sheet even at the edge, of over a mile.

Sir James Ross mentions that--"Whilst measuring some angles for the survey near Mount Lubbock an island suddenly appeared, which he was quite sure was not to be seen two or three hours previously. He was much astonished, but it eventually turned out to be a large iceberg, which had turned over, and so exposed a new surface covered with earth and stones."

The condition of the Arctic regions is quite different. There is much more land, and no such enormous solid cap of ice. Spitzbergen, the land of "pointed mountains," is said to be very beautiful. Lord Dufferin describes his first view of it as "a forest of thin lilac peaks, so faint, so pale, that had it not been for the gem-like distinctness of their outline one could have deemed them as unsubstantial as the spires of Fairyland."

It is, however, very desolate; scarcely any vegetation excepting a dark moss, and even this goes but a little way up the mountain side. Scoresby ascended one of the hills near Horn Sound, and describes the view as "most extensive and grand. A fine sheltered bay was seen to the east of us, an arm of the same on the north-east, and the sea, whose gla.s.sy surface was unruffled by a breeze, formed an immense expanse on the west; the glaciers, rearing their proud crests almost to the tops of mountains between which they were lodged, and defying the power of the solar beams, were scattered in various directions about the sea-coast and in the adjoining bays. Beds of snow and ice filling extensive hollows, and giving an enamelled coat to adjoining valleys, one of which, commencing at the foot of the mountain where we stood, extended in a continual line towards the north, as far as the eye could reach--mountain rising above mountain, until by distance they dwindled into insignificance, the whole contrasted by a cloudless canopy of deepest azure, and enlightened by the rays of a blazing sun, and the effect, aided by a feeling of danger, seated as we were on the pinnacle of a rock almost surrounded by tremendous precipices--all united to const.i.tute a picture singularly sublime."

One of the glaciers of Spitzbergen is 11 miles in breadth when it reaches the sea-coast, the highest part of the precipitous front adjoining the sea being over 400 feet, and it extends far upwards towards the summit of the mountain. The surface forms an inclined plane of smooth unsullied snow, the beauty and brightness of which render it a conspicuous landmark on that inhospitable sh.o.r.e. From the perpendicular face great ma.s.ses of ice from time to time break away,

Whose blocks of sapphire seem to mortal eye Hewn from caerulean quarries of the sky.[65]

Field ice is comparatively flat, though it may be piled up perhaps as much as 50 feet. It is from glaciers that true icebergs, the beauty and brilliance of which Arctic travellers are never tired of describing, take their origin.

The attempts to reach the North Pole have cost many valuable lives; Willoughby and Hudson, Behring and Franklin, and many other brave mariners; but yet there are few expeditions more popular than those to "the Arctic," and we cannot but hope that it is still reserved for the British Navy after so many gallant attempts at length to reach the North Pole.

FOOTNOTES:

[56] Sh.e.l.ley.

[57] Campbell.

[58] Holmes.

[59] Bell.

[60] Hemans.

[61] Gunther, _History of Fishes_.

[62] Darwin, _Coral Reefs_.

[63] Abercromby, _Seas and Skies in many Lat.i.tudes_.

[64] _A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago._

[65] Montgomery.

CHAPTER X

THE STARRY HEAVENS

A man can hardly lift up his eyes towards the heavens without wonder and veneration, to see so many millions of radiant lights, and to observe their courses and revolutions, even without any respect to the common good of the Universe.--SENECA.

CHAPTER X

THE STARRY HEAVENS

Many years ago I paid a visit to Naples, and ascended Vesuvius to see the sun rise from the top of the mountain. We went up to the Observatory in the evening and spent the night outside. The sky was clear; at our feet was the sea, and round the bay the lights of Naples formed a lovely semicircle. Far more beautiful, however, were the moon and the stars overhead; the moon throwing a silver path over the water, and the stars s.h.i.+ning in that clear atmosphere with a brilliance which I shall never forget.

For ages and ages past men have admired the same glorious spectacle, and yet neither the imagination of Man nor the genius of Poetry had risen to the truer and grander conceptions of the Heavens for which we are indebted to astronomical Science. The mechanical contrivances by which it was attempted to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies were clumsy and prosaic when compared with the great discovery of Newton.

Ruskin is unjust I think when he says "Science teaches us that the clouds are a sleety mist; Art, that they are a golden throne." I should be the last to disparage the debt we owe to Art, but for our knowledge, and even more, for our appreciation, feeble as even yet it is, of the overwhelming grandeur of the Heavens, we are mainly indebted to Science.