STRANGE GANGWAYS OF THE DEEP.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1076, 15 March 1911, Page 8

STRANGE GANGWAYS OF THE DEEP.

NOR'ARD 0' WELLINGTON. THE WEIRDNESS OF THE REEF. (Uy Gyro.) Without doubt many ot the shells in Hid lagoon aro dead. But why aro thoy dead? Without doubt, the living shells on tho other side of the reef have a very different background set for imitation of vitality and colour, lint why are these

fo different? We arc only on the threshold of the mysteries.—itobort Louis Stevenson.

The train rumbled out of Thorndon Station in tho morning, and, in the evening, came out upon New Plymouth and thosea. It seemed no'timo after that till we were in the Toligan Archipelago, and hoard tho captain calling to "lower away tho stab'board lifeboat." Twenty strokes of the oars, and we had passed within tho portals of a cave. In this the chequered gleams from the water covered the green walls with a dancing netwbrk of shadows, and, looking down into the depths, wc could see—as distinctly as if it lay embedded in crystal—a merman's garden of grotesque coral growths.

Thenceforth our interest in those precarious, annular gangways of the deep which, collectively, are called "the reef," grew and grew.

Teeming with an incredible plenty of painted fishes, yet itself burrowed witt. loathsome pink worms, at once alluring and horrid, pleasrtnt to walk upon, but its lightest scratch venomous, this strange outwork of tho Islands is first seen by the traveller from New Zealand in "Holy Tonga." But it is never the. same reef in any two islands. It is one tiling in the Friendly Islands, and quite another in the Navigators. In tho Low Archipelago it reaches its acme of wcirdness, but, everywhere one sees it, it seems to bo a realm of uncanny contrasts. In one island you look over from a canoe, and perceive, swimming over a white floor, an innumerable company of creatures of extraordinary ' hues — gold, and purple, and violet, and scarlet, jet black, mottled, and every shade of green. In anothor island, externally similar and similarly set to the wash of the sea, you come upon the palest possible display where the sickly pallor of the reef has its counterpart in the putrescent desolation of half-dead things within it.

This is only tho beginning of the contrasts.

Accost the fisherman whose spear is whistling .among the fish where the shadows of tho clouds.fleck the lagoon, get him to come with , you across the coral rampart (everywhere mined with digusting forms of life) to where the ocean is bursting on tho seaward side. For a small bribe he will spear the merry fellows playing iii tho depths, and, when tho "catch" inside and the "catch" outside are mixed in his little square of tappa cloth, you may ask him to tell you which of the fish were from, the ocean, and which from the lagoon. He cannot'tell; but, laughing, he will throw them all away. For the first may bo wholesome eating; to eat the second may mean loathsome sickness. .. ,

Wo are still only at the beginning of the mysteries. • •

Charter a cutter, and take the same brown pagan with you to another island, and you find, perhaps, that investigation must begin.all over again. The gnome will spear all day for you, impartially on this side of the reef or that, but ho may be averse to.taking any for food. All that he knows is that certain.fish were, safe to cat in his own island. It may or may not }je so here.

Besides all this theso strange fishponds derive their quality not altogether from their locale. Once, in the Island of Mango, it seemed to me that the phases of tho moon had something to do with it, and, it is well known that in Funafuti, Butaritari, and other places, times-and seasons do count for something. At a certain time tho fish on 0110 sido of tho reef only may be poisonous; a fortnight later . both will bo impregnated with death; still another fortnight passes, and all become fit to rejoice the fancy of an epicure. Why? I never heard any Island man explain. Perhaps it is all reducible to terms of some rational theory which wots of the varying calcareous deposits which tho fish imbibe, but, to introduce science, seems' like smearing tho story with tho clammy finger of a starfish. Tho natives aro prone to refer all causation to the heavenly bodies. "If," says the usual brown person in Apia, "your luro is of a certain kind, and if tho moon is.in the last quarter, and you steer for a certain opening in the kelp, and you say an incantation, and Venus is low in tho heavens, and ,the tide is such and such, you will catch a bonito." These "ifs" which hedge tho bonito round are interminable, but the planet Venus, so brilliant in theso latitudes as to pale the fisherman's torch, had, I noticed, -always something to do with things, just as in the heathen days it was referred, to her, as , Arbitr'css of Life-' and Death, to" determine tho periodic occasions when tho man-hunters should issue from the villages'with arms and bodies oiled for battle, and the ovens wero lighted in all tho cannibal valleys.

Apart from tho reef, and yet allied to it, there arc certain strange.humours, in the Island coasts which 0110 stumbles on at times. Tho reef itself is not very striking in Tonga, but travellers through this group aro likely to feel spmo curiosity as to the existence and whereabouts of "Mariner's Cave." There can be no doubt that there exists in one of tho islands south of Va-vau such a cave as Mariner describes, and which can only be entered by a long and perilous dive. He himself seems to have entered it by its submarine archway, but few, if any, of the . present generation have braved it. Many years ago tho captain of .a British warship succeeded in braving this submerged portal, but, rising too quickly, ho sustained injuries from which ho died, having scratched his back with tho coral.

In his poem, "The Island," Byron also describes it: — A spacious cave, Whose only portal was the keyless

wave; . A hollow archway by the sun unseen, Savo by tho billow's glassy veil of

green, In some transparent, ocean holiday, When all tho finny people arc at play

Particularly interesting and easy of access are tho pools, little and mighty, which remain oii a semi-submerged reef at low water. One pool, of a certain depth, may wear an ultramarine hue, and be alive with little bluo fishes. In tho next' pool, a shade deeper, and perhaps differently affected by tho light, tho colour of tho deepness is orange, and the fish wear a livery of gold. But there is no uniformity. Each island has its own kind of reef, and the nearer one approaches the Equator tho stranger theso gangways of the 1 sea appear to grow. Sharks, of course, swarm everywhere, and generally about the entrances, but the natives apparently fear them, much less than they do tho swordfish. The latter, poisonously spincd, is a savage and fearless creature.