Corals and coral islands.

PREFACE.

5

even the sternest fronts made to smile and be glad as delights
the gay tropics, and alive with waterfalls, gliding, leaping, or
plunging on their way down from the giddy heilghts, and,
as they go, playing out and in amid the foliage; of gorges explored, mountains and volcanic cones climbed, and a burning
crater penetrated a thousand feet down to its boiling depths;
and, finally,-bevond all these,-of man emerging from the
depths of barbarism through christian self-denying, divinelvaided, effort, and churches and school-houses standing as central objects of interest and influence in a native village.
On the other hand, there were occasional events not so
agreeable.
Even the beauty of natural objects had, at times, a dark
back-ground. When, for example, after a day among the
corals, we came, the next morning, upon a group of Feejee savages with human bones to their mouths, finishing off
the cannibal feast of the night; and as thoughtless of any impropriety as if the roast were of.wild game taken the day be
fore. In fact, so it was.
Other regions gave us some harsh scenes. One-that of
our vessel, in a tempest, fast drifting toward the rocks of
Southern Fuegia, and finding anchorage under Noir Island,
but not the hoped-for shelter from either winds or waves; the
sea at the time dashing up the black cliffs two and three hundred feet, and shrouding in foam the high rocky islets, halfobscured, that stood about us; the cables dragging and clanking over the bottom; one breaking; then another, the storm
still raging; finally, after the third day, near midnight, the
last of the four cables giving way, amid a deluge of waters
over the careering vessel from the breakers astern, and an instant of waiting among all on board for the final crash; then,
that instant hardly passed, the loud caln command of the