crescent-shaped; others resemble a
horse-shoe in figure. These last are nothing more than narrow circles of land
surrounding a smooth lagoon, connected by a single opening with the sea. Some of
the lagoons, said to have subterranean outlets, have no visible ones; the
enclosing island, in such cases, being a complete zone of emerald. Other lagoons
still, are girdled by numbers of small, green islets, very near to each other.
    The origin of the entire group is generally ascribed to the coral insect.
    According to some naturalists, this wonderful little creature, commencing
its erections at the bottom of the sea, after the lapse of centuries, carries
them up to the surface, where its labours cease. Here, the inequalities of the
coral collect all floating bodies; forming, after a time, a soil, in which the
seeds carried thither by birds germinate, and cover the whole with vegetation.
Here and there, all over this archipelago, numberless naked, detached coral
formations are seen, just emerging, as it were, from the ocean. These would
appear to be islands in the very process of creation - at any rate, one
involuntarily concludes so, on beholding them.5
    As far as I know, there are but few bread-fruit trees in any part of the
Pomotu Group. In many places the cocoa-nut even does not grow; though, in
others, it largely flourishes. Consequently, some of the islands are altogether
uninhabited; others support but a single family; and in no place is the
population very large. In some respects the natives resemble the Tahitians:
their language, too, is very similar. The people of the south-easterly clusters
- concerning whom, however, but little is known - have a bad name as cannibals;
and for that reason their hospitality is seldom taxed by the mariner.
    Within a few years past, missionaries from the Society Group have settled
among the Leeward Islands, where the natives have treated them kindly. Indeed,
nominally many of these people are now Christians; and, through the political
influence of their instructors, no doubt, a short time since came under the
allegiance of Pomaree, the Queen of Tahiti; with which island they always
carried on considerable intercourse.
    The Coral Islands are principally visited by the pearl-shell fishermen, who
arrive in small schooners, carrying not more than five or six men.
    For a long while the business was engrossed by Merenhout, the French consul
at Tahiti, but a Dutchman by birth, who, in one year, is said to have sent to