ages are seated, there the
canoes ply and are drawn up; and the beach of the ocean is a place
accursed and deserted, the fit scene only for wizardry and shipwreck,
and in the native belief a haunting ground of murderous spectres.

By and by we might perceive a breach in the low barrier; the woods
ceased; a glittering point ran into the sea, tipped with an emerald
shoal, the mark of entrance. As we drew near we met a little run of
sea--the private sea of the lagoon having there its origin and end, and
here, in the jaws of the gateway, trying vain conclusions with the more
majestic heave of the Pacific. The _Casco_ scarce avowed a shock; but
there are times and circumstances when these harbour mouths of inland
basins vomit floods, deflecting, burying, and dismasting ships. For,
conceive a lagoon perfectly sealed but in the one point, and that of
merely navigable width; conceive the tide and wind to have heaped for
hours together in that coral fold a superfluity of waters, and the tide
to change and the wind fall--the open sluice of some great reservoirs at
home will give an image of the unstemmable effluxion.

We were scarce well headed for the pass before all heads were craned
over the rail. For the water, shoaling under our board, became changed
in a moment to surprising hues of blue and grey; and in its transparency
the coral branched and blossomed, and the fish of the inland sea cruised
visibly below us, stained and stripped, and even beaked like parrots. I
have paid in my time to view many curiosities; never one so curious as
that first sight over the ship's rail in the lagoon of Fakarava. But let
not the reader be deceived with hope. I have since entered, I suppose,
some dozen atolls in different parts of the Pacific, and the experience
has never been repeated. That exquisite hue and transparency of
submarine day, and these shoals of rainbow fish have not enraptured me
again.

Before we could raise our eyes from that engaging spectacle the schooner
had slipped betwixt the pier-heads of the reef, and was already quite
committed to the sea within. The containing shores are so little
erected, and the lagoon itself is so great, that, for the more part, it
seemed to extend without a check to the horizon. Here and there, indeed,
where the reef carried an inlet, like a signet-ring upon a finger, there
would be a pencilling of palms; here and there, the green wall of wood
ran solid for a length of miles; and on the port h