Corals and coral islands.

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CORALS AND CORAL ISLANDS.

-represents a scene on Duke of York's Island, another of the
same solitary group of atolls. The view was taken on the
lagoon side, and exhibits the placid lake, the border of verdure
far away in tile distance, and, near by, the margin of a native
village beneath its cocoa-nut grove. A few young plants of
the Pandanus stand along the point. The houses are like
those of other islands to the west and northwest. The point
in front of the village is one of three small quays, two feet out
of water. The house, resting partly upon it and partly on
poles in the water, and thatched with leaves of the Pandanus, was apparently a shelter for canoes and fishing-tackle.
The Gilbert Group affords an example of a less isolated
coral-island people. A beautiful view representing a part of
the village of Utiroa, on Drummond's Island, is contained in
the same volume of Wilkes's Narrative with the preceding.
The public-house of the island is even larger than that on
Bowditch's Island, measuring one hundred and twenty feet in
length, forty-five feet in width, and forty in height to the
ridge-pole. This island, unlike the Duke of York's, was
densely peopled, and, owing apparently to the scant supply of
fish and vegetables thus occasioned, many of the natives were
afflicted with leprosy, and also had bad teeth, both circumstances unusual for the Pacific. Lean in body and savage in
look and gesture, they strangely contrasted with their fat, jolly
kinsmen on some of the more northern islands of the same
group. An old, fat chief who came from one of these islands
to the ship's side in his canoe was actually too large to have
reached the deck except bv the use of a tackle. It was evident that infanticide-a necessity according to their system
of political economy-was more thoroughly practised than on
Drummond's Island, and that the population was thus kept
from becoming uncomfortably numerous. The obesity was