d as each
shell will contain two or three pints, forty or fifty thus placed under
different trees will supply a good number of men. A pair of these cockle
shells, bleached in the sun, weighed a hundred and one pounds; but still
they were much inferior in size to some I have since seen.

The fruit of the pandanus, as it is used by these Indians and by the
natives of Terra Australis, affords very little nourishment. They suck
the bottom part of the drupes, or separated nuts, as we do the leaves of
the artichoke; but the quantity of pulp thus obtained, is very small, and
to my taste, too astringent to be agreeable. In the third volume of the
Asiatic Researches, the fruit of the pandanus is described as furnishing,
under the name of _Mellori_, an important article of food to the
inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands; and in Mauritius, one of these
species is planted for its long and fibrous leaves, of which sacks, mats,
and bags for coffee and cotton are in a made.

This little island, or rather the surrounding reef, which is three or
four miles long, affords shelter from the south-east winds; and being at
a moderate day's run from Murray's Isles, it forms a convenient anchorage
for the night to a ship passing through Torres' Strait: I named it
_Half-way Island_. It is scarcely more than a mile in circumference, but
appears to be increasing both in elevation and extent. At no very distant
period of time, it was one of those banks produced by the washing up of
sand and broken coral, of which most reefs afford instances, and those of
Torres' Strait a great many. These banks are in different stages of
progress: some, like this, are become islands, but not yet habitable;
some are above high-water mark, but destitute of vegetation; whilst
others are overflowed with every returning tide.

It seems to me, that when the animalcules which form the corals at the
bottom of the ocean, cease to live, their structures adhere to each
other, by virtue either of the glutinous remains within, or of some
property in salt water; and the interstices being gradually filled up
with sand and broken pieces of coral washed by the sea, which also
adhere, a mass of rock is at length formed. Future races of these
animalcules erect their habitations upon the rising bank, and die in
their turn to increase, but principally to elevate, this monument of
their wonderful labours. The care taken to work perpendicularly in the
early stages, would mark a surprisi