The ocean / By P. H. Gosse.

  • Gosse, Philip Henry, 1810-1888.
Date:
[pref. 1845]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ocean / By P. H. Gosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    336/388 (page 314)
    sn Vasco cle Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and penetrated to climes which had hitherto been invested with all the romance of mystery and fable; then commencing a commerce which has poured incalculable wealth into the lap of Europe. This immense archipelago, which occupies a tract of the ocean four thousand miles in length, and fourteen hundred in breadth, is an assemblage of islands perfectly unique. The multitudinous islets of the Pacific, if all united, would not together form a third-rate island of this group. The land, though broken with countless thousands of isles, so equally divides the space with the sea, that one is at a loss to say which predominates. A large majority of the smaller isles and reefs are of the same struc- ture as the coral atolls of Polynesia, and present a similar character in their zoology and botany ; but the larger tracts of land, almost a continent in their dimensions, are of the old formations. The widely scattered groups of small islands on the northern boundary, indeed,—the Ladrones, the Carolines, the Pelews, &c., we are at a loss to distinguish: they are usually arranged in the Indian Archipelago, while they are decidedly Polynesian in their cha- racters. The boats which are used by the natives of these islands, from their very peculiar construction, as well as from their unrivalled powers of sailing, de- mand a moment’s notice. Lord Anson, who first met with them at the Ladrone Islands, and who calls them flying proas, considers them “so singular and extraordinary an invention, that it would do honour