Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of meat, and are a most ferocious and irresistible nation. Whence such strangely incorrect
opinions could have arisen it is difficult to understand, unless they are derived from Arab
priests, or hadjis returned from Mecca, who may have heard of the ancient prowess of the
Turkish armies when they made all Europe tremble, and suppose that their character and
warlike capacity must be the same at the present time.
GORAM
A steady south-east wind having set in, we returned to Manowolko on the 25th of April,
and the day after crossed over to Ondor, the chief village of Goram.
Around this island extends, with few interruptions, an encircling coral reef about a quarter
of a mile from the shore, visible as a stripe of pale green water, but only at very lowest ebb-
tides showing any rock above the surface. There are several deep entrances through this
reef, and inside it there is good anchorage in all weathers. The land rises gradually to a mod-
erate height, and numerous small streams descend on all sides. The mere existence of these
streams would prove that the island was not entirely coralline, as in that case all the water
would sink through the porous rock as it does at Manowolko and Matabello; but we have
more positive proof in the pebbles and stones of their beds, which exhibit a variety of strati-
fied crystalline rocks. About a hundred yards from the beach rises a wall of coral rock, ten
or twenty feet high, above which is an undulating surface of rugged coral, which slopes
downward
towards the interior, and then after a slight ascent is bounded by a second wall of
coral. Similar walls occur higher up, and coral is found on the highest part of the island.
This peculiar structure teaches us that before the coral was formed land existed in this
spot; that this land sunk gradually beneath the waters, but with intervals of rest, during
which encircling reefs were formed around it at different elevations; that it then rose to
above its present elevation, and is now again sinking. We infer this, because encircling reefs
are a proof of subsidence; and if the island were again elevated about a hundred feet, what is
now the reef and the shallow sea within it would form a wall of coral rock, and an undulat-
ing coralline plain, exactly similar to those that still exist at various altitudes up to the sum-
mit of the island. We learn also that these changes have taken place at a comparatively re-
cent epoch, for the surface of the coral has scarcely suffered from the action of the weather,
and hundreds of sea-shells, exactly resembling those still found upon the beach, and many
of them retaining their gloss and even their colour, are scattered over the surface of the is-
land to near its summit.
Whether the Goram group formed originally part of New Guinea or of Ceram it is
scarcely possible to determine, and its productions will throw little light upon the question,
