So it might well happen that a ship occasionally passed these supposed uninhabited volcanic islands with their dangerous coral-reefs, without being observed by any of the inhabitants and without any inclination on the part of the captain to touch at such an unprofitable and perilous group of islands.
On several parts of the great outside reef there are elevated spots, which are covered with a soil composed of disintegrated coral, decomposed sea-weed, the remains of various shell-fish, especially echini, and the droppings of sea-fowl which congregate in large numbers on them. On this soil there is generally a group of palm-trees, particularly cocoa-nut. When there was nothing particular going on in the way of shark-hunting or the other sports and amusements that engrossed so much of the time of the unemployed youth of Colymbia, I would make an excursion by myself to one or other of these little oases, and sheltered by the foliage of the trees, would sit or lie for hours scanning the vast expanse of calm blue ocean and dreaming of home and the friends from whom I was apparently separated for ever. These islets are singularly free from the inroads of those pestilential insects that render life so intolerable on the mainland. I could repose in comfort and quiet under the shade of the umbrageous foliage of the palms, and I often lay there until the sun had sunk beneath the horizon and the stars began to sparkle in the deep-blue vault of the sky. I would then quit my peaceful resting place and plunge below to the brilliantly-lighted abodes of the pleasure-loving people, and join the merry assemblies at the gyrating-halls or lecture-rooms, or pass a more quiet evening at the
