nd by the time the sun
rose, were in the whale-boat, pulling towards the new arrival. She was
a dirty, weather-beaten, nondescript-looking little craft, half fore
and aft schooner, half dandy-rigged cutter, and the look-out on board
was evidently not very vigilant, for we had almost arrived alongside,
before a black head showed over the gunwale, and, frightened at seeing
a boat-load of armed men in such an unexpected spot, poured out a flood
of shrieking jargon that would have aroused the Seven Sleepers, and
which speedily awoke from their slumbers the remainder of the crew.
There seemed to be only two white men, one of whom introduced himself
as the captain, and asked us, in French, to come on board. The vessel
was the 'Gabrielle d'Estonville', of New Caledonia, commanded by
Captain Jean Labonne, and had put into Rockingham Bay for water, during
a 'beche-de-mer' expedition. Anything to equal the filth of the fair
'Gabrielle', I never saw. Her crew consisted of another Frenchman
besides the captain, and of seven or eight Kanakas, two of whom had
their wives on board. As perhaps this extraordinary trade is but
little known to the reader who has not resided in China, I will briefly
narrate how it is carried out.

From the neighbourhood of Torres Straits to about the Tropic of
Capricorn, extends, at a distance of fifty to a hundred miles from the
shore, an enormous bed of coral, named the Barrier Reef. There, untold
millions of minute insects are still noiselessly pursuing their toil,
and raising fresh structures from the depths of the ocean. Neither is
this jagged belt--though deadly to the rash mariner--without its uses.
In the first place, a clear channel is always found between it and the
mainland, in which no sea of any formidable dimensions can ever rise,
and now that modern surveys have accurately indicated where danger is
to be found, this quiet channel is of the greatest use to the vessels
frequenting that portion of the ocean, for they avoid the whole swell
of the broad Pacific, which now thunders against and breaks harmlessly
on the huge coral wall, instead of wasting its fury on the coast
itself. In the second place on the Barrier Reef is found the
'Holothuria', from which the 'beche-de-mer' is prepared. It is a kind
of sea-slug, averaging from one to over two feet in length, and four to
ten inches in girth. In appearance, these sea-cucumbers are more
repulsive, looking like flabby black or green sausa