The nomads’ tents are illustrated opposite the next

page. Externally they are made of palm-leaf matting[29], in colour as

well as in shape suggesting haycocks. The sheets of this material are

stretched over long, bent sticks and fastened together with wooden

skewers. The doorway of the tent is on the less steeply-sloping

side and though only two or three feet high is partly curtained

with a piece of sacking or other cloth. They are invariably built

with their backs to the north, that is, against the prevailing

wind. This is the case even in the summer, when to be out of the

wind is torture to the European. If the wind changes to the south,

the door is closed up and the wall propped up a little on the north

side. In all, except the poorest, the house is divided into two

parts, even though the whole space is generally only about 10 feet

square. The larger division is formed by the erection of a kind of

second tent of goat’s hair cloth within that of matting. This is

entirely closed in by a curtain from the low space by the doorway

where the cooking is done, and where visitors sit on their heels.

The inner compartment is really a sort of four-poster family

bed, the bed and bedding consisting of some boards arranged as a

flooring a few inches above the ground, on which is spread a mat

made of the split midribs of palm-leaves placed parallel to each

other and tied together with thin strips of leather. This is known

as the “serîr,” a word which in Egypt denotes a bedstead. For

bedding there is perhaps a hard leather pillow, or a piece of rough

log will serve this purpose. I have seen odd ends of squared poles

thrown away from some carpenter’s shop used thus, for sharp angles

in the pillow are not regarded by men whose idea of comfort is a

plank bed minus blankets.

If a regular bedstead be part of the furniture of a town house,

it is an “angarîb” made of cords stretched over a frame. This,

if large and well made, is very comfortable, judged even by European

standards.

Of the other objects to be seen in the house the most conspicuous

is the master’s shield, with dagger belt and sword, and the

most essential is a large water jar. To one of the upright sticks

supporting the tent are hung various utensils containing the family

larder, e.g., the bowls and skins of milk (which is generally sour

and evil smelling). The milk bowls are curious, being either closely

woven, water-tight baskets of palm-leaf, gourds[30], or bottles

hollowed out of solid blocks of hard wood. Some of these latter are

great works of art, being perfectly round and nearly as thin as

porcelain vessels, though cut out of a dark red wood entirely by

the unaided hand. The practical advantages of enamelled iron ware

appeal to the natives; the brass cooking pots of antique design,

such as shewn in Fig. 50 on Plate XXIII, and the fellows of which may

be seen at Pompeii, are being replaced by this prosaic material. For

cups, empty meat tins, cleaned and the edges straightened, are most

commonly used if an European lives near. A stock of samin butter

may be kept in a four-gallon paraffin tin.

_Plate XV_

[Illustration: Fig. 28. Tents on the edge of Yemêna Oasis]

Of all the kindly fruits of the earth the onion is the greatest

boon to us desert dwellers. Its portability and keeping qualities

enable it to arrive fresh and wholesome even at this end-of-the-world

village, and after weeks of rice and dûra diet the value of a dish

flavoured with onions is immense. It is the only vegetable ever used,

water-melons being the only fruit, and those but rarely seen even

in the winter.

Smoking is rather rare, chewing universal. Pipes or

“hubble-bubbles” I have not seen except in the hands of Egyptians

or Arabians, the tobacco being burnt by natives in the end of a

piece of sheep’s marrow-bone, or as cigarettes. All love to chew

a kind of brown snuff which seems to be a great solace during work

and in the intervals of pearl diving.

Tea is taken after every meal and oftener. A half-pint teapot

suffices for half a dozen men as it is sipped, saturated with sugar,

from tiny glass tumblers. Its flavour, poor to begin with, is utterly

spoiled by the brackish water and of course by the excess of sugar.

Coffee is not so much used in our village, though in the South I

was told by a resident Egyptian official, “These people do not

complain if they have no food. They are used to that, but if they

have no coffee they become as though mad.” Coffee is made in the

following manner:—Glowing charcoal is placed in a thick wooden bowl

(_a_) of Fig. 31, the “beans[31]” laid upon it, and the whole

shaken occasionally to keep the charcoal alight and yet prevent

burning. When roasted, the berries are pounded in a wooden mortar

(_b_) with a stone pestle (_c_). The wooden case and its cover

(_d_), like the rest, is cut out of solid wood and contains the

fragile earthenware coffee pot. The coffee is boiled in this until

it froths up, when the pot is removed until it subsides, when it

is replaced on the fire and removed until it has frothed up three

times. After it has been allowed to settle for a minute or two it

is ready to sip[32].

Incense is used, not only during religious performances, but also for

scenting the clothes and body. The man or woman desiring this luxury

squats over a smouldering censer, which he covers with the clothes

he is wearing, so that all the smoke is collected within them.

Some form of citron oil is used very extensively as a scent,

indeed so much so that the odour of it seems characteristic of

natives. Possibly some of its favour is due to its usefulness in

keeping off mosquitoes.

Except for the liberal anointing of the hair with mutton fat,

the natives are very cleanly in their persons, and quite free from

vermin. The sailor population is so much in the sea as well as on it

that they could hardly be dirty; but I believe all natives will wash

when they can. Inland, I am informed, things are very different, but

there the preciousness of water is an all sufficient excuse. It is

one recognised by their religion, which permits dry sand to be used

for water in the ablutions necessary before prayer in the desert.

_Plate XVI_

[Illustration: Fig. 29. Goats feeding on thorn bushes]

[Illustration: Fig. 30. Milk bowls, plaited and wooden, gourd

and baskets]

[Illustration:

_d_ _b_ _a_

_c_

Fig. 31. A coffee set, and some women’s rings]

_Plate XVII_

[Illustration: Fig. 32. Arabian sword dance]

[Illustration: Fig. 33. Arabian sword dance]

[Illustration: Fig. 34. Hamitic wedding dance]

Set forms of amusement seem to be few. As already mentioned,

the performance of the Mûled is both a religious exercise and an

entertainment, and a peculiar “dance” is indulged in with much

relish on all occasions, though the performance seems pointless and

monotonous in the extreme. The photograph was taken at a wedding,

the bundle of dried palm leaves on the extreme left set up on

the ridge pole of the tent being here, where no palm trees grow,

the symbol of wedded prosperity. The women guests form a rough

semicircle and provide music by chanting and clapping the hands

together. The men stand in a group opposite at a little distance,

and at intervals one or two of them run forward towards the women,

jump into the air as high and as often as they can, and then return

to their fellows. The photograph shews two men at the top of their

jump together.

The sword dance illustrated was a really fine display, made

by the captain and crew of a merchant _sambûk_ which was in

harbour. Hearing a considerable noise in the village one night,

I strolled out to see what it might be, and found complete silence

and darkness! Enquiring at the house of one of my sailors, I found

the whole party in his tiny hut; I told them there was not the least

objection to their dance provided it went on no longer than midnight,

and that I should much enjoy seeing it. I was rewarded by a really

interesting display, instead of the tame performance I expected;

sticks being used in place of swords. So I arranged for another

performance, which is depicted on Plate XVII, by daylight, and gave

leave for real swords to be brought from the _sambûk_. The principal

dancers each had a sword and its scabbard in their hands, the crew,

negro and Arab, forming the lines between which the dancers marched,

turned and whirled to the sound of song, clapping and drum. It

was desperately hot work by daylight, but the enjoyment of all is

visible even in the photograph.

Sham fights are sometimes performed, with apparent fury, by natives

armed with sword and shield; but this is a much lower thing than the

symbolic expression of emotion given by the Arabians’ dance. The

ordinary negro dancing is absolutely stupid in appearance, and I

could not find that the performers attached any meaning to it. Two

of these men, however, can give a good sham fight with sticks, but

it is that and nothing more, the emotions dramatised being of the

crudest. Throwing their heavy curved walking sticks at another which

is stuck vertically into the sand, is one of the minor amusements

for boys and men. Sides are chosen, the losers’ penalty is to

carry the winners on their backs over the range, or this may be

compounded for by the losers standing cups of tea. This is really

practising a useful art, as hares &c. are killed in this way. There

is also a game in which two men move white and black pebbles over a

draughtboard in which holes are cut to contain the pebbles, or the

board may be merely a series of little holes in the sand. There is

a good deal of gambling over cards, the ordinary European cards,

and those of good quality too, being very cheap. I was at pains

to discover the game, but found it so elementary and uninteresting

that I straightway forgot it again. Perhaps this is why it is played

for money; without serious gambling interest the game would not be

worth playing, even to a native.

CHAPTER V

SAILORS OF THE RED SEA

The sailors of the Red Sea are practically all Arabians and their

negro slaves. They generally give Jedda or a neighbouring port

as their headquarters, though some are from Sinai in the north to

Hodêda in the south. The Sudan coast is merely a portion of their

beat, few vessels really belong to the country. The pearlers, too,

come and go as they visit the reefs of the whole sea in turn.

The maritime Hamites are so very few and so rarely depend entirely

on the sea for a living, but upon their animals also, that it is

surprising to find that they are distinguished in any way from the

country population. The difference may be expressed in the actual

words of one of them. “You see that man riding a camel? He would

think me a fool because I know little about camels, while I think

him a fool because he might die of hunger by the sea-side, not

knowing how to get even clams (_Tridacna_) to eat.”

“When these people from the hills come down here and we offer

them rice they look at it and say ‘That is worms (? maggots),

we don’t eat worms.’”

They are skilful sailors of their little dug-outs and readily

learn the management of larger vessels, but very rarely go with the

Arabians away from their own coast. No boat building is done even

in Suakin, the country being devoid of timber, though repairs can

be effected there.

The coasting vessels of the Red Sea are “dhows” or as here

named “sambûks” (see Figure on pages 60 and 62, and Fig. 36,

Plate XVIII). Several kinds are distinguished by separate names,

e.g. a rather small type is known as a “gatira,” but all

are essentially the same. They are both beamy and deep, with long

overhanging bow and a square stern. There is little keel apart from

the depth of the boat itself and they are not good at beating to

windward. They are quite open, such decking as there is at bow and

stern being merely for convenience in managing sail and rudder,

not built with the idea of protection from a sea breaking aboard.

[Illustration: _a._ Halyard tackle. _bbb._ Stays. _c._ Fêsha.

Fig. 37. Rigging of a _sambûk_]

The rig is a single lateen sail of cotton canvas, which in a boat

over 50 feet long is of great size. A mizzen mast is stepped, but

the mizzen sail is only used under the very best of conditions. I

have often asked the headman of one of these boats why, on starting

out with a light breeze at 6 o’clock in the morning he did not set

his mizzen, and have been told that, as he knew the breeze would

freshen about 10 a.m., it was not worth while. They are excellent

sea boats and will stand a great deal of bad weather. Despite the

extreme clumsiness of the rig and the apparently haphazard way the

numerous half-naked sailors tumble over one another and yell like

Babel when anything has to be done, they are cleverly handled. When

travelling in them I have sometimes seen situations calling for an

extreme nicety of manipulation to avoid an accident, manoeuvres which

were carried through with skill and coolness by men who, placed in

an English boat, would seem both clumsy and mentally unbalanced.

_Plate XVIII_

[Illustration: Fig. 35. Pearling canoes coming in from diving]

[Illustration: Fig. 36. A pilgrim _sambûk_]

Besides the clumsiness of the lateen rig with its huge single yard,

the primitive blocks and tackle used necessitate a large crew. One

of my boats, 50 feet long by 10 feet beam, requires a crew of nine,

and the headman considers this too few. Generally all passengers

join heartily in the hauling

[Illustration: Fig. 38. Diagram of halyard]

and yelling, which (especially the latter) is necessary to raise

the great yard. Two thick ropes, named the Fêsha, attached to the

yard pass through rough sheaves at the mast head, the other ends

being both attached to a hanging pulley block of four sheaves or

more. Through the sheaves of this hanging block pass the halyards,

which, running through a block at deck level form a tackle by

which the hanging block and the “fêsha” ropes are hauled down

and the yard of course rises. In practice there are two halyards,

both passing through the same hanging block, as there is not room

for the whole crew to haul at a single rope. The cordage is all

made of coconut fibre and there is no standing rigging, all stays

and the “vang,” or stay to the yard, being moveable and set up

with simple tackles. They may be made very useful in hauling heavy

goods aboard when loading.

There are two principal disadvantages of this lateen rig which call

for special skill. The first is that at the end of each tack in a

head wind you cannot “go about” in the ordinary way but must fall

away from the wind and wear round. In an ordinary fore and aft rigged

vessel this operation would involve gibing, the sail going over with

a violent bang which would be extremely dangerous in a high wind,

especially where the tack of the sail is fixed down forward of

[Illustration: Fig. 39. Laden _sambûk_ under sail

(_From a photograph_)]

the mast. As this sail has no boom gibing is avoided by letting go

the sheet and carrying it and the sail forward while the tack is

unfastened and brought aft, both meeting at the mast, so that the

sail is practically furled. The long yard, being balanced by its

suspension at the mast head, is brought to a vertical position,

the sheet carried forward of both it and the mast and so round to

its new position on the other side and carried aft. As there is no

tackle[33] on either sheet or tack the boat is so steered as to help

these movements and the sail does not draw until the sheet is made

fast. It is to facilitate the movement of the heavy yard from one

side of the mast head to the other that the mast slopes forward so

markedly. The operation is ingenious and calls for good seamanship,

especially in a strong wind and heavy sea, when any fault might

result in great force being unexpectedly applied to the rigging

with awkward results. Just as this is the reverse to our gibing so,

instead of carrying weather helm, the vessel falls off from the

wind instead of luffing if left to herself, and where the steersman

of a fore and aft rigged vessel would luff to a big wave or strong

squall the Arabian falls away. As there is but one sail, a large

part of which is forward of the mast while the deepest part of the

keel is aft, it is impossible to have any of the sail set when at

anchor, and so the anchor must be raised, sail set and way got on

the vessel almost simultaneously, indeed the sail must draw as soon

as it begins to rise and the yard is not at the mast head till some

distance has been travelled. Similarly on coming into harbour the

sail is lowered completely, long before the anchorage is reached.

Like most sailors of the warmer seas the Arabs are amphibious. For

instance, the order is given to carry out an anchor away from the

vessel, which is to be moved by hauling on the anchor rope. If the

distance is not great and the depth inconsiderable the sailors will

consider it less trouble, instead of lowering a canoe in which to

carry out the anchor and rope, to throw them overboard and then

go after them with a run, a yell and splash, to the sea bottom,

where two or three men seize and run with the anchor a few yards

under the water, come up for a breath of air while others go down,

descend again and carry the anchor another stage, until the anchor

rope is fully extended. Generally when the anchor goes overboard at

the end of the day’s journey one or two of the crew go down after

it and work it nicely into the mud. Similarly in getting an anchor

up if it is caught in the coral, instead of manœuvring the boat

to loosen it in the usual way a man goes down to see what is the

matter, and either loosens it or directs the operations of those

in the boat. How would an English yachtsman regard diving after

his anchor? Not as an everyday occurrence, but as an adventure of

a lifetime.

To the Arab sailors such a voyage as from Bombay to Aden, and

on through the whole length of the Red Sea, must be an adventure

like that of a voyage of Ulysses. As to the old Hero so to them

all accidents are due to the personal intervention of God, or

of good and evil spirits, and there is no dividing line between

fact and legend. Distances, which for us have so dwindled, remain

for them enormous. I have myself spent as long over a voyage of

a hundred miles, anchoring each night in yet another desolate

creek or “khor,” as over the whole voyage by steamship from

Marseilles to Port Sudan. At that rate 1000 miles in a _sambûk_

would be almost equivalent to a circumnavigation of the globe in

a modern vessel. But what a difference! In the latter case, to

the passenger deck chairs and novels, to the officers methodical

routine and the keeping the running correct as per time-table,

in the former ceaseless personal effort, at frequent intervals the

direct pitting of oneself against the chances of the sea, the winds

and waves, reefs and hidden coral pinnacles, the everyday hardship

often aggravated by the rarity of the points at which water and

food may be procured. Rarely are two days alike, and the date of

the voyage’s close is, as they would express it, known to God. And

adventures everywhere, the calling at strange little desert towns,

the outer fringe of even Arabian and Turkish civilisations, islands

and harbours unknown to the outer world, wild peoples, communities

living apart, connected with the world only by some rudiments of

their common faith, savages even to the Arab sailors. There is too,

even yet, the chance of meeting pirates, or of a windfall or ruin

resulting from some smuggling adventure. I would that they could be

conscious of the poetry of it all. To them the glory of the battle is

but the hardship of everyday life, strange scenes and places only the

possible failure to procure provisions or the chances of being robbed

by petty tyrants. At least it is a life that makes real men, men who

must have learned some communion with the God of Nature and the Sea.

_Plate XIX_

[Illustration: Fig. 40. Hamitic fisherman]

[Illustration: Fig. 41. A small pearling _gatîra_]

[Illustration: Fig. 42. A large pearling _sambûk_ with ten canoes]

The Hamites are skilful sailors of their small boats and of

the little dug-out canoes in which pearl fishing is done. These

measure about 16 ft. in length with a beam of 18 in. to 2 ft. For

a short distance weather seems to be of no consideration to them;

one sees canoes tearing along under full sail, the steersman

busy throwing out[34] the water with his spare hand, while the

other occupant hangs to the mast which threatens to be carried

away by the wind at every moment, and leans as far over the side

as he can to prevent her capsizing. I know several cases of men

travelling eighty to a hundred miles along the coast in such canoes,

partly on the open sea and partly on the shallow water over the

reefs. One instance is particularly remarkable, a bent old man,

practically blind with age, appeared, having travelled from the

next village to the north, eighty miles away. His only companions

were two particularly irresponsible-looking little boys, whose ages

I should estimate at 8 and 10. I enquired how he managed the boat

seeing he was blind. “The boys tell me to luff or bear away and

I do as they say” he replied, as if that were quite a simple,

safe, and easy method of travel.

Pearl fishing is carried on by the Arabs all over the Red Sea by

means of vessels of every size from the smallest, carrying four men

and a boy, to the largest with a crew of twenty or more. Frequently

the captain is a patriarch, the crew being largely his family and

connections, with a few negro slaves or ex-slaves.

The _sambûk_ carries as many canoes, dug out of solid tree trunks,

as it can, up to half the number of the crew, and the actual fishing

is done from these canoes, the large vessels being merely means of

transport and eating and sleeping places.

On reaching the fishing-ground the _sambûk_ anchors, under the

shelter of a reef, perhaps miles out to sea, or perhaps near some

islet or sandbank. The canoes with which it is loaded are launched

and two men paddle away in each. Though both can dive they go in

pairs distinguished as “captain” and “paddler,” the former

being chosen for good eyesight and skill in distinguishing the

pearl shells from the weeds, sponge, and stones among which they

grow. A bad captain “sees every stone as a shell” which results

in waste of energy in useless diving. He examines the sea-bottom

by means of a “water telescope” (Arabic “Maraya,” a word

also applied to mirrors, among other things), a paraffin tin with a

glass bottom. The glass is pressed on the surface of the sea, thus

flattening out ripples and giving a smooth surface through which, in

this transparent sea, objects can be clearly seen at a depth of from

twenty, thirty, and sometimes even sixty feet[35]. So the canoe is

slowly paddled over the sea until a shell is sighted, when the canoe

is manœuvred into the proper position, and the diver descends and

secures it. The business is not generally a simple dive and return,

though that is a clever enough thing to do without upsetting the

canoe. In the case of not quite fully-grown oysters the creature

is attached to the bottom by a very strong silky green cable,

and I have watched the diver plant both feet firmly on the bottom,

and wrench and twist at the sharp-edged shell with both hands for

some time before it would come away.

The average duration of a long dive is 90 seconds, two minutes being

the longest I have seen. To one in the boat counting the seconds

waiting for the reappearance of the diver this seems a long time, and

doubtless the exaggerated reports of divers staying under water for

five minutes have thus arisen. Two minutes of considerable exertion

under the pressure of 30 ft. of water is surely a sufficiently

remarkable feat. The greatest depth to which a naked diver descends

is thirteen fathoms, equal to seventy-eight feet.

_Plate XX_

[Illustration: Fig. 43. A pearl oyster seen; manœuvring the canoe]

[Illustration: Fig. 44. The dive]

[Illustration: Fig. 45. The “oyster” secured]

[Illustration: Fig. 46. Landing on Dongonab beach]

The captain only dives for an hour or two in the morning,

after which he saves his eyes for finding the shells which his

paddler secures. These men, whether Arabs of the _sambûks_ or

Hamites who go out from their villages in canoes, dive without

any apparatus at all. A few negroes descend by a weight and cord

in likely places where the water is too deep to see the bottom,

on the chance of coming across shells. The Hamites ridicule them

for using this method, but so far as I can see their results are

just as profitable. Two or three large shells seem to be considered

an adequate reward for a day’s great labour.

The provisions for a _sambûks_ cruise of six months are of the

simplest, sacks of dûra corn and a barrel or two of the brackish

warm water of the desert wells. Stones for grinding the corn, a big

cooking-pot and a basin or two are the whole equipment. The fire

is kindled on a box of sand. A sheep kept alive until a feast day,

is sometimes seen on board, but coffee is the one luxury. It is

a terribly hard life. Think of coming in from a day’s work of

diving and paddling a canoe under that blazing sun to a meal of

tasteless dûra porridge, sometimes a little fish, burnt rather

than cooked[36], and warm brackish and dirty water, eaten probably

without shelter from the sun, or at best under a scrap of flimsy

cotton, here set against a sun which blazes and scorches rather

than shines. Well have they earned their night’s rest, yet what

a bed is theirs, a surface of hard wood without even the flatness

and smoothness of the plank bed of a prison cell.

Though sharks occur and are sometimes common in the Red Sea,

a native does not look round for them before going overboard,

though if one should be seen, diving is over for the day. To one

locality, named Shark Island, divers will not go for fear of these

beasts, but diving is continually going on in a bay where several

sharks are captured each year. I have only heard of one fatality,

in which case a man’s feet were taken off and he bled to death

after regaining his canoe.

Fishing is done by running a net round a shoal of fish, by

throwing-net, hook and line, trolling with a scrap of white rag

or sheepskin with white wool left on, and by spearing. The latter

method alone is peculiar to this coast so far as I know, so the

former need but scant mention. The throwing-net is circular, about

twelve feet in diameter, made of fine string with small mesh. The

circumference is weighted with small pieces of lead. In use the

fisherman grasps the centre of the net and folds the rest over his

arm carefully, after wringing out excess of water. He then walks

cautiously along by sandy shallows, looking for the ripplings,

invisible to foreign eyes, which indicate the movements of fish. On

seeing these, bending double, he creeps up as cautiously as possible

until near enough to throw. This is done very suddenly and with a

circular motion, so that the net spreads out parachute fashion in

the air and descends vertically upon the fleeing fish. The fisherman

kills any that are enclosed by biting their heads through the meshes

of the net before removal. The fish thus captured is generally a

species of mullet about the size of a herring, and excellent on

the table. Its native name is El Arabi, i.e. the Arab. The method

is of course only possible in shallow water with a sandy bottom,

but such ground occurs at the head of all the harbours, so the

throwing-net is much used. I have seen two men returning from

fishing with festoons of “Arabs” covering their whole bodies,

but such good luck as this is not common.

Hook and line fishing is the same here as anywhere else. The

favourite baits are “sardines” and pieces of the flesh of the

giant clam (_Tridacna_) or of the big whelks (_Fusus_, _Murex_,

and _Strombus_), all of which are as easily obtained as lug-worms

or mussels at home. Clams’ flesh is the commonest, and anyone

interested in curio-collecting should ask a fisherman to keep for

him the pearls found in them. As the clam shell is an opaque white,

so are the pearls, which, though consequently valueless, are as

much true pearls as those formed by the lustrous pearl oyster.

“Sardines” are known even to the natives by this name, but are a

small species of anchovy of the sardine size. At certain times they

collect, presumably for breeding purposes, into shoals in the shallow

water so dense as to form black patches 10 or 20 yards across,

from which it is easy to collect a bucket-full in a few minutes by

means of a sheet. They are kept alive by the fisherman allowing his

canoe to be a third full of water in which they swim until thrown

overboard to attract fish, or impaled on the hook as bait.

The number of species of fish thus caught is large and the greater

number are very good. The best are several species of _Caranx_

known as “bayâda,” some of which attain to a great size,

sometimes four or five feet long, but the smaller are better for

eating. The most peculiar is perhaps the “abu sêf” or “father

of a sword,” a most appropriate name. It is ribbon-shaped, three

feet long or so, back and belly quite straight and flattened from

side to side, in fact just the shape of a sword blade. Further,

its sides are of the most dazzling whiteness, brighter than any

silver, and its ferocious teeth and vigorous movements bring the

terror of a sword to all the smaller fish.

The nets and spears bring in the greatest variety of all, the

brilliant blue, pink, and green species of the parrot-beaked

_Pseudoscarus_, which actually eat coral; the queer bladder-fish,

in which also the teeth are fused up like beaks, which can blow

themselves up like footballs, in one species (_Tetraodon hystrix_)

thus erecting the hundreds of fearful spines into which its scales

are modified; the box or coffer fish, the skins of which are quite

stiff and bony and cover square bodies, which in some species

have horn-like spikes pointing forward over the eyes; file fish

(_Ballistes_) which feed by crunching up shellfish (including pearl

oysters) with their powerful jaws; in fact enough variety of strange

habits and shapes and colours, striking by their brilliance or

interesting by their resemblances to the inanimate environment of

their possessors, to fill another book (were half known) or stock

a museum.

Besides fish of ordinary size the larger species, such as rays and

sharks, are generally captured by spearing. Nowadays the spear is a

piece of round bar iron, half an inch in diameter, a rough unbarbed

point at one end and with an eyehole, to which a line is attached,

at the other. It is twelve feet long, and quite small fish may be

impaled upon it in twenty-four feet of water. Its use is often

combined with pearl fishing. Should the captain see a fish the

spear is handed to him as he leans over the side of the canoe,

and he watches the fish through the water glass in one hand, the

spear being held in the other, with perhaps half its length in

the water, more or less according to the depth. The canoe being

rightly placed, a sudden jerk sends the spear shooting downwards,

and more often than not the fish is impaled at the first attempt;

so little splash is there, that it is often possible to throw it

several times without driving the fish away altogether.

There are in most tropic seas certain gigantic rays or skates, whose

horizontally flattened bodies are like a huge square, ten to twenty

feet across. One corner is the head, eyes above, mouth underneath,

the two side corners are fins, while to the fourth is attached the

tail. This is a strange thing for a fish, being like a whip-lash, say

6 feet long, provided at its base with one or more erectile spikes

four to six inches long, sharp and barbed all along each edge, and

further very poisonous. The natives of both Zanzibar and the Red Sea

assure me that even in the case of the smaller species, to tread on

these spikes is death. Hence the common name of the family, Sting

Rays. It is interesting to note that these dangerous implements

are used purely in self-defence. All species are conspicuously

coloured, one being yellow brown with large bright blue spots,

another black with round white spots. The largest are black, and

so conspicuous on the sandy bottoms they frequent that none but the

most unteachable animal, human or otherwise, can incur the dreadful

penalty of careless interference with them. Otherwise the animals

are perfectly harmless, living on shellfish which their small but

powerful jaws can crush up[37]. Yet so impressive is the size of

some species, so ghostly the appearance of a vast black living

shadow rising from the blue depths under the boat, and so queer the

formation of the head in some, that they are universally known as

Devil fish. And for all their harmless diet and their warning colour

which considerately advises that one interferes with them at one’s

own risk, I join in hearty approval of their opprobrious name.

_Plate XXI_

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Fig. 47. Pearl-divers]

As is so sadly true of most marine organisms, we know far too

little of their habits. What is the reason for the strange leaps

they make into the air, falling back on to the water with a thudding

splash that can be heard a mile away? It is usually done by night,

a circumstance that adds to the strangeness of this sudden obtrusion

upon our minds of the existence of a scarcely known world beneath

the water, which we, in our preoccupation with our own half of the

world, had almost forgotten.

So much for the prey, now to its hunting. They occasionally appear

on the surface, two or three pairs swimming together, the black

point of the side fin appearing above water, now on this side,

now on that. On one occasion I was out in a small sailing boat

with three or four canoes of pearl-divers, and as the fish when

chased went down wind, we were able to follow, spread out in

a long line so that whichever vessel saw the prey could signal

to the others. We thus kept the chase going for an hour or more,

striking with fish spears repeatedly, but as these are not barbed,

and as in all that hundred or more square feet of body the brain and

heart occupy but a few square inches, the spears may go through and

through, and be withdrawn again when all the line has been run out,

with no appreciable damage to the animal. So on this occasion we

made no capture, but the hour’s chase over this silver sea with

glimpses of mystery beneath was a pleasure to remember.

Another chase, also without capture, was stranger still. I found a

pearling canoe moving over the dead calm sea with no visible means

of propulsion. On reaching them I found they had made fast to a

fish and dared not play the line attached to the spear for fear of

its breaking away. Looking down into the blue with a water glass one

saw the dim shadow of one of those monsters, _Pristis_ by name, half

shark, half ray, in which the snout is prolonged into a beak, into

the sides of which are set formidable teeth, an object frequently

exposed for sale in curio shops as the sawfish’s jaw. This was

one of the largest species of the genus and must have been ten to

twelve feet long without the toothed snout.

We seemed to be in a dilemma; hauling upon the line would almost

certainly withdraw the spear before the fish would be near enough

for further attack, and the canoe had already been drifting about

for two hours or so. However I understood that there was some

hope of capture if the beast could be induced to approach shallow

water, though I was left to wait and see the bold plan which was

in the natives’ minds. By dint of careful manœuvring we at last

approached a reef, when one of the sailors unrove the boat’s

rigging and made a running noose with which he actually dived to

the bottom, braving the six feet of two-edged saw, to slip the

noose over the monster’s tail! I, watching in safety from above,

saw one of the finest diving feats imaginable, the man with the

noose swimming to and fro, following the slow beats of the gigantic

tail, watching his opportunity. Alas, as might have been expected,

the monster was startled, a sudden wriggle and he disappeared,

carrying the spear with him.

CHAPTER VI

DAILY LIFE—WOMEN

Theoretically the women are supposed not to shew their faces and to

be hidden from the world, liable to divorce at the caprice of the

husband, and to be their downtrodden mindless slaves. As a matter of

fact so far from men having four legal wives and numerous concubines,

practically every marriage is monogamous. A tribe of nomads cannot

enclose their women within high walls, and as for veiling, the most

that is done is to hold a corner of their robe over the mouth, or

perhaps between their teeth, and this is probably done as much to

ward off the evil eye as from any ideas of modesty. No woman will,

however, enter the yard enclosing my workshops without urgent cause,

and if brought into my office by her husband she covers her face

completely and squats out of sight behind my writing table, whence

the husband must cuff her on to her feet before business can proceed.

As a general rule the manner and look of the women is as of persons

who know they have rights and a position, and who habitually

make themselves heard in the family councils. Often I have been

aware of the idea in a man’s mind which in English might be

expressed by “I must ask the Missis,” and often it is bluntly

put into words. Indeed, among these Northern tribes the women have

a remarkable freedom, too much for the characters of many of them,

as some subsequent anecdotes shew.

In any dispute brought before me, formally or informally, I find

that, though it appears to be between men only, and to deal with

men’s concerns exclusively, a woman turns up sooner or later,

and often that complainant’s whole case has been put into his

mouth by his wife or some female relative. It is safe to say that

if the men only went to law on their own account, and were left to

settle things their own way, the hard lot of the magistrate would

be much lightened. While blaming the women, it is only fair to say

that the men shew themselves born lawyers in their statements of a

case. The complainant’s account of a transaction makes things look

black for the defendant, and certainly justifies his being sent for,

even if a hundred miles away, but on his arrival one frequently

finds that, though containing no direct lies, the complainant’s

story will bear a different interpretation.

As for divorce, and the consequent laxity of the marriage tie,

all natives feel the difference between a regular marriage and an

irregular alliance, and, if an individual did not, the wife’s

father and brothers would soon point it out. Indeed, a wife can

keep her husband in due subjection by appeals to her relatives.

One morning, after we had been out at sea since sunrise, when I

gave the signal for breakfast, one of my sailors remarked, “That

is good news; we _are_ hungry this morning.”

“Why more than usual?”

“We were out with you yesterday till seven o’clock so when we

got home there was no supper.”

“But you are married men; did not your wives have anything ready

for you?”

“Oh no, they had eaten their own suppers and gone to sleep. Women

do as they like with us. You see, in a town we could go out and

buy something ready cooked, but that is not possible here.”

The idea that wifely duty involved getting up and providing

something, rather than that a husband who had been kept at sea

overtime should go hungry to bed, seemed to them a sweet, but

unattainable ideal. I deprecate wife-beating, but I asked “Did

you not feel inclined to strike them?” but that course would have

meant settling with the father and brothers-in-law, the explanation

that the husbands had come in hungry from the sea and had found

no supper provided being, to their ideas, adequately met by the

retort, “You must let them do as they like, that is the custom

of our tribe and you must do as others do.”

_Plate XXII_

[Illustration: Fig. 48. Spinning goats’ hair. Note nose ring and

bead ornaments (N.B. The word WAR on the tent door merely means that

the sack originally contained War Office stores)]

Marriage is by purchase, and though the bride has no choice,

brothers and sons-in-law are carefully chosen. I once ventured on

the impertinent question, “Now that your sister’s marriage with

so-and-so is not to take place who will she marry?”

“It is so hard to find a husband who will treat her well.”

“Oh yes, of course you don’t want her to marry a man who might

beat her.”

“No I don’t, for if he did it would be my business to beat him,

and I do not intend to have that bother put upon me,” brotherly

love being thus seen to have a practical side.

I know of few cases of legal polygamy and but one or two of

concubinage. One of the former cases is that of my oldest skipper,

a really good old man, whose one grief is that he remains childless

near the close of life.

Divorce was suggested in a case of persistent causeless desertion,

but the husband’s reply was, “I took her when she was such a

little thing, so I love her.”

In another case the woman is a hopeless imbecile. Relatives begged me

to fire a gun close to her head in the hope of awaking her senses,

which I declared useless and dangerous, and refused to do. “She

is my cousin, so I cannot divorce her,” said the husband, an

elderly man who shews her every kindness.

After some months of consultations, in which I shared and tried

to act as peacemaker, one case actually did lead to divorce, and

the lady was known as “the mother of Ali’s child” instead

of as Ali’s wife. In a few weeks, however, Ali came begging for

advance of wages. This being refused he entered into explanations,

“You see I am going to take my wife back. Being divorced, she

has had nothing to eat for a month, so now I must give her a good

feed.” This literal translation of his speech must evidently be

taken in the spirit, for the lady still lives.

Pecuniary questions are so intimately associated with all matters

of marriage and divorce that men’s actions must not be read as

though they indicated feelings only. In the same way the women’s

independence is not only due to their knowledge of their value as

women but also to the fact that the husband, if of the poorer class,

paid, say, six goats, a camel, and four pounds in cash for them,

besides providing for the wedding feast, this involving a debt

which will take him a year or two to pay off, sometimes many years.

Ibrahim’s story is a good illustration of the freedom of women,

which is often abused, and the subjection in which they keep their

men folk. It gives an instance also of the pagan devil worship

which is the real belief of these Muslim when faced by calamity.

Ibrahim is a simple kindly old man, one of four brothers, all of

whom have passed their lives upon the sea. They are old men now,

and their sons are sailors too. The portrait of one of the four is

on Plate X, and decrepit though he looks he still goes to sea in

his own boat, or rather canoe, taking the few goats which are his

wealth across to an island where a shower has fallen. There was

a touch of heroism when he came to me saying, “If you will give

me work as a sailor you will see I am quite strong still. I used

to be captain, but I cannot be that now as my eyes have gone dim,

but try me as a sailor.”

Coming of such a family Ibrahim easily obtained the post of skipper

of my little schooner when it became vacant in my absence. But though

conscientious according to his lights, and a good sailor in native

fashion, he turned out to be not quite the man we needed. He would

travel two hundred miles to fetch the letters, the arrival of which

made a gleam in the darkness of isolation in which we live here. His

arrival was the event of the month—or should have been, but his

reply to the demand was often “Letters? I forgot.” People who

have never been quite alone for even one month cannot imagine the

disappointment, though they may gauge the effect upon business.

As is so often the case here he was an elderly man when he married

a girl of fourteen or less.

I once asked, “Do you think it really quite right for a

white-haired old man to take a little girl like that?”

“If he has the money of course it is quite right” was the

expected reply.

Marital love seems almost unknown, but family affection sometimes

rises strong in later years, apart from its normal origin in the

mutual love of young man and maid, but if the marriage is childless,

or circumstances make it uncomfortable, the worst results follow

in many cases.

His young wife, as wives often do here, one day decided that to live

with her father’s people in the hills would be more agreeable

than with her husband by the sea. By and by Ibrahim began begging

for leave to go to see her, his appeals that she should return to

him having been in vain.

Her replies, as he repeated them to me, were certainly explicit. “I

have only got a couple of girls by you. That’s no good, so I

don’t want _you_ any more.”

Cases like this give rise to an immense amount of solemn conference

between relatives to the _n_th degree and the village elders[38], in

spite of the fact that many women go their own way in any case. The

stages were reported to me at intervals, and in the end the woman

reappeared of her own accord. Alas, her motive soon became obvious,

for she was illegitimately “burdened,” i.e. pregnant. So poor

Ibrahim’s joy was turned to anger and perplexity. He dearly loved

his two little daughters, the two who were held as “not good

enough” by their mother, and wished to keep them while divorcing

the mother. My advice being asked (though I am about half the age

of complainant) I was in a quandary, since the infants were not old

enough to do without a woman’s care and Ibrahim was not prepared

with a substitute.

At this point I came home on leave, and on my return three months

later I found that Ibrahim had actually become reconciled to his

faithless wife; the child of “some young fellow in the hills”

had been born a week or so, and the old man rejoiced over him as

though he had been his own son.

A week later, and surely the hand of Providence was visible even

to fatalists.

“Please come and see Ibrahim’s wife, she is very ill.” Even I

could see that the woman was dying, and that nothing could be done

for her, but at least I succeeded in saving the child from being

fed on “samin,” stinking native butter, which might soon have

killed him.

The inconceivable stagnation of life in a desert coast village makes

any event a godsend. Illness brings joy to all, even the sufferer

seeming to be supported by the knowledge that he is a benefactor

to the public. He is invariably surrounded by a deeply interested

crowd, and never fails to shew appropriate symptoms.

In case of wounds the men are absolutely stoical, where a white man

could not restrain evidence of suffering, and the application of

a red hot nail, which is a frequent treatment for most complaints,

is borne without a murmur. And so the gentle groaning of the sick

is never allowed to become indecorous, but merely serves to prove

that the host and patient is conscious of, and means to fulfil,

his duty to his guests.

In this case things were very different, the woman was beyond even

involuntary groans. The first thing to do was to send a boat for

Ibrahim, who was absent on an island ten miles away. His return

was delayed a full day by his going another five miles down the

coast to the next village, where he spent a month’s wages on

new clothes and borrowed all the jewellery he could. With these

his dying wife was decked out, as a means of persuading the evil

spirit, which had caused her illness, to depart. At home meanwhile

drums were being vigorously beaten outside the tent, a few feet away

from her unconscious head, in the hope that what suasion could not

effect in the mind of the malignant spirit might result from fear.

A stifling crowd of women and children filled the tiny tent,

crowding upon the dying, while behind, in the shade, another party

were making tea very cosily, around one who appeared to be already

sewing the shroud.

The day after Ibrahim arrived the shrieks of this crowd of women

suddenly announced the death. Within half an hour the body was buried

and the mourners were about their ordinary occupations. Ibrahim

wept like a child, though why he should grieve for such a wife it

is hard for a white man to say.

Negro women, being escaped or liberated slaves, and so having no

relatives who can settle disputes with their husbands, sometimes

come in to complain of being beaten, though they owe protection

to the fact that negro women are fewer than the men, so that a

husband who is disagreeable to his wife runs the risk of losing

that valuable property. Hamitic women only come to try and get

an increased allowance from their husbands rarely to complain of

ill-treatment, from which they are protected by their relatives.

The making and mending of clothes, that great part of women’s daily

work, is non-existent with us, for, as before stated, the lengths of

flimsy cotton are worn as they come from the shop. Washing is often

in progress, rather a miserable business in sea-water without soap,

but the thinness of the stuff makes it easier[39].

Besides cooking and the care of children and animals the women have

certain manufactures. The palm-leaf matting for the outer covering

of the tents and houses is bought ready made, but the inner coarse

blanket material is woven at home from the hair of the owner’s

goats, which is collected and spun into coarse thread as it becomes

available. The spinning is entirely by hand, the thread being merely

wound on a dangling stick which is kept spinning by hand. When a

dozen or so large balls of this grey-black and brown thread have

accumulated, a rough weaving frame of three sticks is pegged out on

the sand, and weaving goes on for some days. Neighbours are called

in to help, three to six women generally working together.

Any man passing near women who are working at blanket making must

beware lest they should throw the balls of wool at him. If he is

struck by one the women have the right to demand a present, which

is divided among the helpers.

The palm-leaves used in basket making and for the “Serîr” or

sleeping mat are brought from Suakin, no palms growing in all our

country. These baskets are so closely woven that when once the

fibres are thoroughly wetted they become watertight. The figures

on Plate XVI illustrate a milk-bowl made in this way; the other

baskets have covers and are used to keep women’s trinkets &c.,

or the fragile earthenware coffee-pot, one being ornamented by the

interweaving of strips of thin leather, the other by pieces of red

flannel and tufts of camels’ hair. In other cases the leaves are

bought ready dyed and the resulting basket displays bands of colour.

In making a “Serîr,” or sleeping mat, a woman slits up the

midribs of palm leaves and provides a number of goat-skins scraped

free of hair. These skins are cut into narrow strips like string

and woven in and out between the palm midribs which are laid

side by side, and the number of skins used in making one mat is

surprising. The work is tedious, and she gets neighbours’ help;

the result, as an addition to comfort, seems hardly worth the labour.

_Plate XXIII_

[Illustration: Fig. 49. Weaving. Behind the three women is finished

blanket, in front the threads of the warp]

[Illustration: Fig. 50. Marriageable girl of thirteen cooking rice

in antique brass pot]

It is the women’s business to strike and pitch the tents. In the

village this is done not only on arrival and departure, but after

the tent has stood some time in one place it is shifted to a fresh

site by way of a “spring cleaning.”

Old women and children drive the goats out to “graze” in

the desert in the early morning and may feed and tether them on

their return, but, as already remarked in Chapter III, a peculiar

superstition declares that men must do the milking. They also bring

water from the well, in goat-skins on donkeys.

Women suffer sometimes from a mysterious disease, the symptoms

of which seem closely to resemble those of the “vapours” of

our ancestresses. The help of a female shêkh has to be called in,

sometimes at great expense. First seeing the patient she prescribes

what articles of clothing, especially what ornaments, are to be worn,

and then goes off alone into the desert, where, according to my

informant, she behaves like a maniac, apparently invoking good and

exorcising evil spirits. “Vapours” would of course yield most

easily to suggestion, and the little break in the monotony of life,

the fuss and mild excitement, are quite enough to bring about a cure.

In my demonstration of the independence of women even in a Moslem

community I am conscious that the less agreeable side of their

character becomes unduly prominent. I would now leave on record

that in many cases the standard of wifely duty is far above what

one has any right to expect from the conditions of their lives.

The best women are often the least conspicuous members of any

community, but their presence is made evident in the existence of any

kind of prosperity or real happiness. I conclude my account by saying

that in this village amid all the laxity of an Oriental civilisation

bordering on savagery, in spite of its desolation and poverty,

lack of defence against either the dreadful heat of summer or the

cold of winter, the hunger that makes men eat the food of cattle,

and where fresh water is often an unattainable luxury, men find

the happiness of home in a way which multitudes of our own urban

poor do not know. Where this is so goodness must necessarily be;

though its laws differ from those we ourselves know, its presence

is none the less evident.

_Plate XXIV_

[Illustration: Fig. 51. Baby girl with lamb, which is _not_ woolly]

PART II

CHAPTER VII

CORALS AND CORAL ANIMALS

Directly we look at the ground in the neighbourhood of Port Sudan

or Suakin, or indeed anywhere on this part of the Red Sea coast,

we see that it is largely composed of shells and fragments of

coral. Further, it is easy to see that these differ from the

fossils of home limestones in their extreme abundance, in their

lying loose among the surrounding sand, and in their being familiar

to the collector of shells as common species still living in the

neighbouring sea. The same is true of the corals, though in this

case the identification is not quite so obvious. The fact is we are

walking upon a coral-reef, almost exactly like those still forming

and growing in the sea, which has been elevated by earth movements

above the water, and every grain of the earth was once part of a

living creature.

Such elevated coral-reefs are common in the world, but they rarely

remain so little altered by the upheaval as here. All this dry

land and these splendid harbours, many mountain masses in different

parts of the world, innumerable islands in the Pacific and Indian

Oceans rising from enormous depths of water, are monuments of the

life-activity of certain lowly organisms.

So much is generally understood, but too often the vision is of

“patient insects building islands in the deep.” At least the

visitor to the new town of Port Sudan must recognise the coral

organism as the fundamental fact of all that he has come so far to

see. They are the builders of those foundations of which the great

quay-walls are but a trimming and straightening of an infinitesimal

portion, but it is no more possible to directly observe the building

action of the coral polyps than to see the growth of the bones in

a child.

Fig. 52. A simple sea-anemone.

Figs. 53 and 54. Young and fully developed colonial anemones.

Figs. 55 and 56. Two views of a living coral polyp (_Caryophyllia

smithii_) from above and from the side. The radial plates of

limestone, conspicuous in Fig. 57, are seen through the transparent

body wall. Otherwise the animal is like Fig. 52.

(Drawn from living animal by H. C. Chadwick, A.L.S.)

Fig. 57. The stony cup of _Caryophyllia_, seen from above and from

the side, after removal of the polyp’s flesh.

_Plate XXV_

[Illustration: Fig. 52]

[Illustration: Fig. 53]

[Illustration: Fig. 54]

[Illustration: Fig. 55]

[Illustration: Fig. 56]

[Illustration: Fig. 57

Sea-anemones and corals]

An examination of any typical coral fragment, living or dead, massive

or branched, shews that the surface of the stone is shaped into

little cups, which may be large (half an inch or more in diameter)

or very small; they may entirely cover the surface or be scattered at

intervals, be sunk below the general level or project boldly from it

(see the figures of corals on Plate XXVI). In any case, all ordinary

corals consist of a multitude of such cups borne upon a common mass

of the same stony material, and each cup may be regarded as the

remains of one individual “polyp” as the coral animal is called.

It will be a simpler way of gaining an idea of what a coral polyp

really is to take a least specialised member of its class, one in

which each individual lives disconnected from its fellows and does

not secrete the complicated skeleton characteristic of the stony

corals. Fig. 52 shews a “sea-anemone” in no material respect

different to those which Gosse has so beautifully figured from our

own shores. It is seen to be a graceful translucent cylinder fixed

by its base to some chance stone or shell. This extreme simplicity

of form gives the living animal a by no means inconsiderable beauty.

The free end of the cylinder bears a circle of what look like

hairs, but which are found on testing to be highly sensitive to

touch and are surprisingly adhesive for organs of such transparent

delicacy. They are consequently better named the tentacles, their

function being to adhere to and close down upon any little water-flea

or such-like animal that has the bad luck to swim against them. They

are also provided with stinging cells which are used for paralysing

their prey and for defence. In the centre of the disc is the mouth,

a simple opening, a mere hole in the top of a sac.

Our polyp, or anemone, has no organs of locomotion, no organs

of sight, taste or hearing, indeed no brain. It has at any rate

the rudiments of a nervous and muscular system, for it is able to

move its tentacles all towards that one which has captured prey and

assist it in conveying the food to the mouth. The body is sensitive

all over, for any part when touched will contract, and a violent

shock causes the tentacles to fold together and the whole animal to

close down to a shapeless hemispherical mass. This is the limit of

its sensory and muscular powers, two or three muscular movements,

a few of the simplest reactions to outside influences, nothing that

could be called even the sense of touch.

Internally again the principal interest of the organism is its

extreme simplicity. There is no stomach or gut, no heart or veins,

no lung or gills, no kidneys and no brain. The animal is in fact a

simple sac, the inner walls are much folded to increase their area,

but there is but one body-space to serve for everything. In this

space the food is digested. There is but one opening into it from

the outside, so the indigestible remnants of the food are voided

by the same opening as that they entered by.

Simplicity of organisation could scarcely go farther; we have here

an example of one of the lowest forms of life. Lowly organisms of

this kind shew an astonishing indifference to the separation of

one part from another. No cutting or mutilation does any permanent

harm. Chop the beast to fragments, and not only will each piece

remain alive, but it will grow until it encloses a new sac, forms

a new mouth, tentacles, and adhesive base, and behold a number of

new and complete polyps. This possibility has been taken advantage

of by nature, and numbers of these lowly forms of life propagate

themselves in this way. A projection arises on the side of the

animal, is automatically amputated, grows missing organs, and becomes

a complete and independent animal. The process is exactly like the

planting of rose-cuttings, one of the cases of asexual reproduction

in the animal kingdom.

Now in many cases, where propagation by buds takes place, the

buds undergo their full development into complete polyps while

remaining connected with the parent. An example of a “colony” of

sea-anemones thus formed is given by Plate XXV, Figs. 53 and 54. An

allied form, known as _Palythoa_, is common in the Red Sea as little

star-like rings of tentacles, of a beautiful deep, yet bright, green,

carpeting the sand and stones in shallow water. Each star, or polyp

head, measures about a quarter-inch in diameter, so that when a few

dozen occur together they form a quite conspicuous patch of colour.

As already stated the corals are similar “colonial” organisms,

the numerous cups on their stony branches representing each one polyp

head. But how the polyps are connected with the stony material is

best explained by, as before, taking the simplest possible case,

that of a solitary non-colonial polyp, which is exactly like our

simple sea-anemone, but has a stony cup like one of those of the

ordinary corals.

Plate XXV, Figs. 55 and 56, represents such a form, which is in

fact the only British stony coral[40]. But for differences in

shape and proportion, the upper part of the organism is exactly

similar to the sea-anemone shewn in Fig. 52, but beneath it is

a stony mass, the coral cup, secreted by the base of the polyp,

a seat exactly adapted to its own shape. The empty cup, after

removal of the anemone, is shewn as seen from above in Fig. 57, to

the right, and the curious radial plates of the same stony matter,

so characteristic of all coral cups, are very plain. This polyp is

comparatively large, measuring half an inch or more across.

This cup is not formed in the complicated way in which bone is

made in the higher animals. The material is the cheapest possible,

viz. limestone; this occurs in minute quantities in solution in all

sea-water, and the coral polyp has the power of absorbing it[41]

from the water and rendering it insoluble and stony in just those

places where it is needed to form the kind of cup characteristic of

the species. Another difference from bone is that the secretion is

altogether outside the body of the animal; the cup is a mere dead

structure from the first. One can imagine the animal as throwing

down a limestone seat for itself, and as the seat thickens the

polyp is raised more and more above the sea-bottom.

Galaxea Seriatopora Favia

Porites Coeloria Stylophora

(another form)

Siderastrea Pavonia Favia

Pavonia Pocillopora

Pocillopora Porites Hydnopora

(a common kind)

_Plate XXVI_

[Illustration: Fig. 58. Stony corals of 13 species belonging to

9 genera; generic names only given]

_Plate XXVII_

[Illustration: Fig. 59. _Dendrophyllia_, a simple colonial coral

with distinct polyp cups]

Imagine now the polyp to bud, as does _Palythoa_, and each bud

to secrete its own cup, while the connecting branches also throw

down the same limestone, so that the cups are connected on to one

mass, and we have at once the formation of ordinary reef coral,

of which perhaps the simplest possible case is the _Dendrophyllia_,

figured on Plate XXVII, where each polyp gives rise to but one bud,

which gives out one other, so each branch is like a simple chain

of polyps and their cups. The other corals figured are rather

more complicated, since one polyp gives off many buds, and their

branches are correspondingly more massive. In the hemispherical

corals, the connecting branches are short, practically non-existent,

and the polyps are crowded together, as a kind of skin, over the

solid mass of limestone they have secreted. Certain species of

coral form enormous colonies, containing hundreds of thousands of

little polyps. I remember a certain part of the fringing reef of

Zanzibar[42] over which the water was 6 feet or more deep. Being

perfectly clear, and so favourable to coral growth, it was inhabited

by a species of the genus _Porites_, which formed huge cylinders,

the flat tops measuring 6 to 12 feet across, level with that of the

lowest spring-tide, since it is impossible for the polyps to live

above that level. So closely were these great cylinders planted

in the water that it was easy, by striding and jumping from one to

another, to cross the channel to the shallower part of the reef on

the other side.

From what has been said of the formation of the coral cups it is

clear that the quantity of living matter going to the formation of

these great cylinders is very small, a mere gelatinous film over

the surface.

The fundamental simplicity of structure, which is common to every

coral, does not preclude the evolution of an amazing variety of

forms. In the course of time as many species have been evolved

as there are possible combinations of the conditions, animate and

inanimate, which affect coral growth and survival. In form these

range from huge and solid stones, weighing many tons, to tiny

delicate things like petrified lace or ferns, some of substance

nearly as hard as shells, others so spongy as to be easily cut into

by a knife. I have been enabled to give two plates illustrating

a few out of this amazing variety. Both massive, hemispherical

or dome-shaped, and more delicate branched species are shewn, but

lobed growths, such as that shewn at the bottom of the first group,

intergrade the two divisions. The latter specimen is of particular

interest, being a species of the genus _Porites_, already referred

to as forming great cylinders of solid stone. This small specimen

was taken from shallow water, near lowest tide level, so that the

polyp cups, which are too small to be visible in the photograph,

were intact only on its sides. Above they were killed by the air

and sun, and the stone they had formed, being exposed to the action

of the sea, has been dissolved away slightly, leaving a narrow rim

round the edge, where the part that was protected by living flesh

shews the height the colony originally attained.

In the middle of the plate are small dome-shaped colonies, of species

which, though rarely growing to the size of the _Porites_ cylinders,

may form very considerable boulders. Notice the different shapes

of the polyp cups, with their radiating plates, and the varying

beauty they impart to the surface of the stone, a beauty which is

enhanced by examination under a lens.

_Plate XXVIII_

[Illustration: Fig. 60. Stony corals

All are forms of genus _Madrepora_ except the lowest, which is a

species of _Symphyllia_]

Most of the branched kinds belong to one great genus _Madrepora_,

one of the most conspicuous of all the forms seen in a living reef,

and which contains a very great number of species. In spite of the

wide variety of outer shape, the structure of the coral polyps

is almost identical throughout this genus. The colonies may be

quite small and are generally of moderate size, but one tremendous

growth has been recorded, which covered an acre of the sea bottom

and sent its branches of stone to the height of 50 feet. In this

case a single coral equalled in size a plantation of large trees,

but what is usually seen is a network of branches springing from

one thick stem and spreading horizontally, and covering a fan-shaped

or circular area of a square yard at most.

Not only are the growth-forms of corals varied as those of plants,

but the details of the polyp cups are well worth attention. Typically

the surface of the coral is covered with round depressions,

which may be minute, as in _Porites_, or half an inch across as in

_Caryophyllia_ and the dome-shaped species shewn on Plate XXVI. All

are partially filled up by complicated series of radial plates, and

a central core, best seen in the illustration of _Caryophyllia_, and

the arrangement and ornamentation of these form an endless variety of

patterns. In other cases the depressions, instead of being round, are

elongated, forming meandering grooves over the surface, which, from

their superficial likeness to the convolutions of the human brain,

give the name “Brain coral” to certain kinds. In others again the

walls of the cups disappear, and the system is reduced to a network

of plates, converging to the centres of the polyps, or these may be

so thickened and flattened that the spaces between them appear as

fine lines, tracing a lace-like pattern on the surface of the stone.

One is tempted to write a whole book on the beauties of corals

and coral animals but must refrain; one other form is however so

interesting, and at the same time so common, that a short special

description is given.

In many sheltered water gardens may be seen numbers of what look like

overturned, stalkless, mushrooms. On handling they are found to lie

loose on the sand and to be stony corals. They are in fact single

polyps of phenomenal size, being up to six inches across, and the

radiating plates, which so resemble the “gills” of a mushroom

(hence the name of this genus, _Fungia_) correspond to those already

seen in the other corals illustrated. The cup wall is however absent.

The life history is as strange as the coral that results. The young

polyp produces at first a quite ordinary, small, cylindrical cup,

Plate XXIX, which is fixed to a stone in the usual way. After

reaching a certain size this swells at the top into a disc, like

a mushroom on its stalk, except that the mushroom head is turned

wrong side up. A little later this head falls off on to the sand,

where it continues to grow into the big _Fungia_ discs first met

with. This, however, is not the death of the original polyp, which

goes on growing new heads which in turn fall off, _ad infinitum_!

Many attempts have been made to visualise the beauties of a coral

garden, in poetry, romance, and works of sober science. I can make no

claim for my own picture, but that perhaps it is written with better

acquaintance than is generally possible to poets and romanticists,

and that it is free from exaggeration, as the writings of a biologist

should be.

Let us imagine our exploration from the beginning. It is a calm

morning in summer, the sea a pearl of beauty, under the new-risen

sun. The heat, great even in the early morning, is unnoticed in

enjoyment of the delicate pink and blue and golden shades reflected

by the mirror-like surface, unbroken by any indication of what lies

below. The tints of reef and shoal, which form so beautiful a part

of the seascape when the water is rippled, are now exchanged for

atmospheric colours, which, as we float over from deep to shallow

water, give place to a panorama of coral gardens below.

_Plate XXIX_

[Illustration: Fig. 61]

[Illustration: Fig. 62]

[Illustration: Fig. 63]

Mushroom Corals

Fig. 61. _Herpolitha_, an elongated fungid

Fig. 62. The young form of _Fungia_

Fig. 63. A typical _Fungia_-disc

As we row, keeping watch ahead, the reef seems suddenly to spring

up before us, so steep is its slope.

The pleasure of the sight of a new and beautiful world of shapes

and colours, mimicking yet utterly unlike those of life on land,

is for us enhanced by the vigour of its life and growth, in happy

contrast to the desert shore.

On the edge of the shoal _Porites_ and other solid forms appear

as great rocky buttresses among the lighter plant-like growths,

or, a little way from it may rise from the depths as an isolated

pillar. In many places in the Red Sea such coral pinnacles abound

in comparatively deep water, a horror of unexpected danger to

the sailor.

There is nothing more fascinating than the edge of a reef in the

open sea, where numbers of forms and their delightful groupings

can be seen in succession, one below another, till they become hazy

and gradually lost in the blue depths, sixty to ninety feet below

us. There are precipices clothed with a thick bush of spreading

coral, some seeking the light by reaching out horizontally, others by

growing upwards tree fashion, what appear to be bare rocks turning

out to be massive colonies, as much alive as the more plant-like

forms, caves, dark in contrast to the bright corals that surround

their mouths, and the white shell-sand with which they are floored.

The general colour of living corals is very various, the snow white

or creamy skeletons seen in museums being covered by a tinted film of

polyps. The majority of species are some shade of brown, from deep

chocolate to the golden colour of some seaweed covered boulders on

home shores, but among these bright tints are abundant. The brown

branches of _Madrepora_ are generally tipped with light violet, pink

or white, as though each ended in a flower, while other branched

corals are a brilliant scarlet or bright green all over. Another

forms a series of large thin sheets, spreading horizontally one

above another, and all of a brilliant yellow! In these the flesh is

inconspicuous, appearing as a mere colouring of the stony branches,

but in others the polyps are as conspicuous as “sea-anemones,”

with typical flower-like discs, a row of tentacles surrounding

the mouth, or the tentacles may be so long that nothing else is

visible. One of these, _Galaxea_, is very beautiful, shades of

bright or dark green mingling with a greater or less proportion of

brown, so that the rounded knolls of coral may resemble hillocks

of grass, or of brown seaweed. Another large coral is almost devoid

of tentacles altogether, but the polyps are large and the stone is

covered as it were with green brown velvet, laid down in soft folds.

Of the inhabitants of these gardens and grottoes there is no space

to speak. Anemones of all sizes and colours abound, and flower-like

animals, the most beautiful of which are the sensitive sea-worms,

add colour even to the corals. The gorgeous fish that lazily pass

in and out, as though flaunting their beauty they could be careless

of danger, have been described by every traveller.

The association between certain smaller fish, crabs and other higher

animals with corals is remarkable. One sees for instance a branched

coral with a shoal of tiny green fish hovering near, or in another

case the fish are banded vertically black and white. Drop a pebble

among them and they instantly disappear among the branches, and if

the coral is taken out of the water the fish still cling to their

refuge, and most of them are captured with it. These are but two

examples of a whole world of life found only among corals.

Seeing that all corals are derivable from the sea-anemone (some form

of which must have been the original ancestor of the whole family),

and that the sea-anemone has been proved to be very distinctly an

animal, I trust that the animal nature of the corals is now too

firmly fixed in the reader’s mind to be shaken by their vegetable

fixity, vegetative growth and form, or even by the fact that I am

about to explain, viz. that the majority of corals do _not_ obtain

their nourishment by the capture of prey, but by the decomposition

of the carbonic acid gas contained in the sea-water, a method of

feeding which is the most distinctive feature of plant-life as

opposed to animal. To recapitulate the well-known and fundamental

fact of the life of this world, the plants are characterised by

their taking up carbonic acid gas which, by the power of sunlight

upon their green matter, they split up in some way so as to form

starch from the carbon with water, while the oxygen is liberated

back into the air. The animals, on the other hand, eat the food ready

prepared for them by the plants, which is consumed in their bodies,

and burned, as it were, back to carbonic acid, which land-animals get

rid of in breathing. So there is a balance, the oxygen necessary to

animal life being freed by the plants from the carbonic acid given

by the animals, which carbonic acid is the necessary food-stuff of

the plants.

The process in the sea is exactly similar, only that the gases

concerned are dissolved in the water and rarely separate and become

visible as bubbles. Fishes give off carbonic acid gas, dissolved

in the sea-water, from their gills, and this is broken up by the

seaweeds which liberate the oxygen from which the fishes and all

animals re-form carbonic acid gas.

Now the amazing thing about the corals is that the polyps have

entered into an alliance with certain microscopic plants which

come to live in their bodies, and they feed upon the starchy

products these plants form in sunlight, and even upon the plants

themselves. So intimate is the union of these strange partners

that neither can live without the other, the coral has lost its

independence, and in fact as well as in appearance leads the life of

a plant. At the first sight of a coral sea one wonders what takes

the place of the great beds of brown and green weed which fringe

British shores, and are a source of the oxygen essential to animal

life. The discovery of these plant partners of the corals gives the

answer. This easy life, this evasion of the necessity of capturing

prey, is doubtless the reason for the degeneration of the polyp

structure noticed above.

One of the greatest interests of these lowly forms of life is their

place in the evolution of the higher. We have left all that is

familiar, the creatures with heads and limbs, far behind, on the

surface as it were, and are groping among the foundations of the

edifice of creation. It is difficult indeed to express how very far

down we are without some description of the rest of the series. But

this is impossible; I am asked to give means of understanding what

a coral is, and should not be thanked for giving in reply a treatise

on Zoology. Let us take two steps only of the process of evolution,

and let these short lengths give an expression of the whole descent.

Consider the vast interval of time and changes of structure

involved in the evolution of man from his ape-like ancestor. How

many thousands of years, what vast advances! How far above the

purely animal is the lowest savage, and how far above that the

best of civilised man! And yet even in the case of the brain, the

development of which is man’s main advance, the man’s brain is

but the further development of the ape’s[43], which has already

gone the greater part of the way manwards from the condition found

in ordinary animals.

Now we and the apes together are derived from some fish-like

ancestor. We all had gill bars fundamentally like those of a

fish at one stage of our existences. It is a vast descent through

the reptiles to the amphibia and then to the fishes[44]! And the

fishes again are our second step illustrative of the vast changes

involved. Fish are just fish to the ordinary man, and yet the fact

is that the difference between man and ape is just nothing to that

between the ordinary higher fish, the kinds that come in after the

soup, and the sharks. The shark family have not yet attained the

possession of true bone, for instance, and their brain development

is almost rudimentary. But we are already in the dim beginnings of

geological history, for sharks essentially like those we now know

were living when almost the earliest of rocks were being laid down

as mud in primeval oceans. These were times incredibly remote, when

land animals were not in existence, when plants were represented

only by seaweeds, the whole land a desert but for possibly some

creeping films of vegetation adapted to life on damp soil ashore,

times long ages before those strange reptiles Iguanodon, Diplodocus,

the whale-like Ichthyosaurus, the giant ferns and lycopods of the

coal measures, whose fossil remains remind us of nightmare worlds

which have passed away, had ever come into being.

We are at the beginning of geological history, and yet the corals are

a large and flourishing class, coral-reefs are growing as nowadays,

and the corals themselves, though of course of altogether different

forms, are essentially the same down to the first syllable of

recorded time. But having proofs of evolution which are independent

of the geological record over these vast aeons, we may safely carry

back the process into those times represented by rocks so ancient

that no fossil trace of life is found in them, to the times when the

lowest fish-like vertebrata were not, and the simple polyp was the

highest product of life upon the earth. We know that most probably

there really was such a time, but to imagine it is like trying to

comprehend the solar system by arithmetic. We may speculate and

wonder at the first beginnings of life, but I, for one, prefer to

leave it to each reader’s imagination.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BUILDING OF REEFS

Sea-water, besides containing comparatively large quantities of

common salt, contains several other substances in solution in less

quantity. One of these is the limestone[45] which the coral polyp

extracts and renders solid as its stony skeleton, and of which,

in essentially the same way, the “shell fish,” whether oyster,

winkles or crabs make their hard coverings. Another constituent

is magnesium carbonate, a substance rather similar to limestone,

to which we refer later.

Having examined the individual stone formed by the growth of a

coral colony we must consider how such stones are aggregated to

form a reef.

It is obvious that colonies cannot live for ever, any more than do

individuals, and we need to know the fate of a dead colony and how

it is replaced by a living one which shall continue the building. So

great is the competition among the crowds of the floating young of

the fixed animals that any vacant spot is at once appropriated. When

a coral colony dies the coloured film of flesh speedily rots away

and the snow-white stony skeleton remains, washed clean by waves and

currents[46]. In a few days this is covered with a film of the finest

green seaweed, invisible among which are the embryos of several

orders of animals, e.g. shell-fish, or, there may be the larvae

of some other coral. There is a tense struggle for survival among

these young creatures, but on a growing reef conditions of course

generally favour the coral’s young (otherwise the reef would cease

to grow), some of which grow at the expense of nearly everything else

and cover the site. Many of the large hemispherical corals live on

the reef like loose stones, but on turning them over one may find

quite a small shell, or coral branch, attached to the centre of the

underside. This is the foundation of the whole, the resting place of

the tiny floating larva, the growth of which first covered the stone

on which it settled by a vigorous colony which when large enough

to be independent of support continued its growth until the mass

exceeded by hundreds of times the bulk of the original foundation.

The more delicate of coral skeletons, such as those of the porous

branched madrepores, rarely survive the death of the polyps that

formed them. On losing its coat of living flesh the coral is exposed

to the action of boring animals, as well as to the direct solvent

action of the sea-water, and many are thus destroyed. Partly they

go back into solution, but the greater portion is broken down to

mud and sand. In shallow water branched colonies are broken up into

pebbles and coarse sand by the waves, and these materials serve to

fill in the spaces between the larger colonies and pack the whole

together into a solid mass.

There are other constituents of coral reefs of not very much less

importance than the corals themselves. Large masses are formed of

the bivalve shells which live in the coral mud, and which, by the

solidification of this mud, form with it a limestone, such as that

of which the houses of Port Sudan are built. Although among the

very numerous and conspicuous fossils of this stone coral branches

are not the commonest, yet the mass of shells and hardened mud is

every bit as much a part of the reef as anything else is. In some

reefs too, even where coral is growing abundantly, the shells of the

great clam _Tridacna_ are so abundant as to make up a considerable

part of the total mass. Others again contain quantities of certain

peculiar seaweeds (of which the “coralline” of British seas is

one) which, though true plants in every detail, have the property of

taking up limestone from the sea and forming therewith a skeleton,

even harder and more compact than that of the corals. Plate XXX

shews the appearance of these plants, and will enable the reader to

identify some of those he meets with. These sometimes form a cement,

by which the coral colonies and fragments are held together, and in

some others the whole reef is formed of them[47]. Other organisms

assist, but I observe my principle of dealing only with the most

important features and desist from enumerating all.

This is the whole structure of the interior of such a reef as that

which fringes the Red Sea coast, as seen e.g. during the excavation

of the quay walls or slipway at Port Sudan. Great “stones”

which are the more massive colonies, generally the genus _Porites_,

are bedded in with smaller colonies whole or broken. In places are

collections of grey mud and sand, also formed from coral by the

action of boring organisms or perhaps as the residue left after

partial solution by the sea.

“How fast does a coral reef grow?” is a question often asked,

and never as yet truly answered. Probably each of the hundreds

of species of coral has its own maximum rate of growth, which is

however rarely attained, as it is certain that the rate of every

colony of each species varies very widely with its position on the

reef and its immediate surroundings. So taking the rate of growth

of a few samples would go a very little way towards giving that

of the corals in any given square yard of the reef edge. Although

individual colonies may grow quite rapidly this is but half the

question. We must know also full details of the action of eroding

and transporting sea currents, solution, boring organisms (in

coral, coral sand and mud) and subtract the total from that of the

deposition of stone by living polyps, to obtain the net increase.

_Plate XXX_

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Figs. 64 and 65. Stony seaweeds,

massive and branched. _Lithothamnia_]

The boring animals mentioned as reducing coral stone to mud are

very easily found and examined. Almost any old worn piece of coral,

and many still living colonies, are found to be studded with small

slit-like holes with slightly raised borders. On breaking into the

stone each hole is found to lead at once into an oval cavity, say an

inch long by three-eighths in diameter, containing a bivalve shell of

about the same size, _Lithodomus_ by name, from its appearance known

as the “date shell,” which has made the hollow and is continually

enlarging it. Other colonies when broken across instead of shewing

pure white limestone are found to be honeycombed with yellow or red

spongy matter. This is the sponge _Clione_, which has the property,

especially astonishing in a sponge, of boring into any limestone,

whether coral or shell, making it quite rotten and so, finally,

reducing it to mud and sand.

Certain worms live in the same way. The largest species of these,

by name _Eunice siciliensis_, attains a length of a yard or so,

and the thickness of a quarter of an inch, but so intricate is its

boring that it is practically impossible to extract a full-grown

specimen entire. The head end is at the innermost part of the burrow,

and when extracted the two white gouge-like teeth, by which the

burrow is cut out, are easily seen.

There is a fish too, _Pseudoscarus_ by name, which actually lives on

coral! It is commonly taken by fishermen and is easily recognised

by its gorgeous green, blue and pink colours, but particularly by

its teeth, which are fused into two pairs of chisels, with which

the surface of the coral, and with it its living matter, is browsed

away. Cut open a specimen of this fish and you find its guts full

of fragments of coral[48].

Figs. 66 and 67. Two specimens of _Porites_.

In 66 the flesh has been left on the coral and where it is broken

it is seen that the dark coloured living matter penetrates the

mass only to the bottoms of the coral cups. In this small piece

the openings of 14 _Lithodomus_ burrows are seen, and in four of

them the lips of the shell are visible.

In 67 the base of the still living coral is rotting away, being full

of small holes formed by the sponge _Clione_ and small boring worms.

Fig. 68. An old piece of coral in which so much of the surface

has rotted away that the numerous _Lithodomus_ borings, of which

only the small openings can be seen in living corals, are fully

exposed. This in spite of partial protection by growth of encrusting

stony seaweed as at the point marked _a_.

Fig. 69. Section of a large shell, a material very much harder than

any coral, yet bored in the same way by both mollusca and sponge.

Fig. 70. The mollusc _Pholas_ lying in its burrow in coral.

Fig. 70 about natural size, the rest about half this.

From specimens in the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology.

_Plate XXXI_

[Illustration: Fig. 66]

[Illustration: Fig. 67]

[Illustration: Fig. 68]

[Illustration: Fig. 69]

[Illustration: Fig. 70

Borings of molluscs and sponges]

_Pholas_, another boring bivalve mollusc, common in shales on

some British coasts, is less often seen. Its burrow is deeply

buried in a solid living colony separated from the outside by a

comparatively long passage. But it is not nearly so common as the

preceding forms, and lives more solitary, _Lithodomus_ generally

occurring in numbers together.

After the coral has been broken down by these means, the sand is

further reduced to fine mud by the action of those animals which

live by burrowing in it, and passing large quantities through their

guts, after the manner of earthworms. Just as there is a great fauna

which lives on the nourishment filtered from large quantities of

sea-water[49] so there is another great and varied community of sand

eaters. There are first of all the worms, next, but more important in

the tropics, great numbers of large holothurians or “sea slugs”

(though slugs they are _not_), some of which crawl on and eat only

the surface sand, but one species burrows deeply and raises casts

like an earthworm, but a hundred times the size. Considering the

large effects produced by the ordinary earthworm in a year, that

resulting from the presence of animals hundreds of times their bulk,

whose casts in many lagoons entirely cover the bottom, must be very

considerable indeed.

One observation that can be made by anybody is to note how long it

is before corals reappear once a reef has been cleared out, e.g. for

the foundations of a quay wall. Two small portions of an apparently

growing reef at Port Sudan were buried under a pile of stones for

the foundations of the east and west Customs landings, and four

years later there was no growth of coral on the artificial slopes

thus made, though every condition apparently remains as favourable

as before. Again at a point inside Dongonab Bay, where coral growth

is luxuriant in shallows, the coral was some years ago collected

from one spot and a sea wall built with it. A few small colonies

have established themselves upon the sides of the wall after an

interval of twelve years; they are perfectly healthy, yet their

bulk is an infinitesimal fraction of that removed from the wall by

solution and attrition. This shews how even among growing coral one

cannot be sure that the degradation of rock to sand and mud is not

in excess of aggradation, i.e. its building up by coral organisms,

and how a lagoon may be rapidly eating away its encircling reefs

and yet contain comparatively luxuriant coral gardens.

[Illustration: Diagram 1. Section across a Coral Reef, fringing

the shore]

It is in its external form that a coral reef shews features

which give it an individuality above that of a mere heap of

stones. Generally it rises with a steep slope from the sea bottom

which ends in a low precipice, above which is another and more gentle

slope to the highest point of the reef, a foot or two above lowest

water, which is near its outer edge. Passing landwards the reef

level is lower again, and we may have a boat channel or series of

lagoons, where the native canoes can travel on calm water however

the sea may rage outside. This is succeeded by a flat of bare rock,

which rises slowly up to the base of the undercut coral cliffs as

in imaginary section in Diagram 1 and the Photograph on Plate XXXII.

We have here three striking features, viz. precipitous reef

edge, raised border and reef flat with boat channel, strongly

differentiating the shore of a coral sea from the more or less

even slope we are accustomed to at home, resulting in a nearly

waveless shore and breakers out at sea, an endless line of purest

white dividing the green of the shallows from the blue-black of

the deep water.

_Plate XXXII_

[Illustration: Fig. 71. Undercut cliffs of Rawaya. The whole

foreground is reef flat formed by the planing down of the land]

Imagine land newly raised from the sea upon which coral growth is

only beginning. In section its coastline would be a more or less

gradual slope (to take the simplest case) as the line A, B in

Diagram 2, sea level being represented by the line C, D. Suppose

the scale to be such that the depth C to A is about 50 fathoms. Now

it is found that under the best of conditions reef corals do not

grow at this depth; if the conditions are less favourable so the

maximum depth at which

[Illustration: Diagram 2. The Commencement of a Reef]

these corals grow is decreased. (That this fact is the crux

of the problems to be discussed later may as well be noted at

once.) Coral growth will be most luxuriant in the shallow water,

and the first stage of our reef will be a mound of coral of the

shape shewn in section by the dotted area. Between E and D this

comes to the surface, and the corals, projecting above the water

at lowest spring tides, are killed at the top, so that E to D

becomes an almost flat surface of dead corals, some of which may,

however, be still living where their bases are immersed in clear

sea-water. A continuation of this process gives us a reef flat

of considerable area, indicated by the line F, D, the slope A, F

becoming correspondingly steepened. At the point F the waves have

thrown up a long low mound of coral fragments and shells, which,

in the way described below, may be consolidated into a ridge of

solid rock.

It is easy to see how an extension of coral growth would make A, F

a regular precipice, as F approximates to C. What happens after F,

the reef edge, grows out to water 50 fathoms deep, where no living

foundation can be laid for

[Illustration: Diagram 3. Further Growth of the Reef]

the support of the still growing reef above? Diagram 3

explains. Passing seawards from F is the gentle slope formed by the

breaking waves, next a precipice, followed by a very steep slope

to the sea bottom beyond A formed of the broken and dead corals

fallen from the growing zone above, and which forms the foundation

on which the shallow water corals extend the reef seawards.

[Illustration: Diagram 4. The Abrasion of the Coast]

Now at the same time as growth has added to the reef seawards

the waves have cut down the land on the other side. Consider this

case separately and then combine with that above. As before, A,

B in Diagram 4 is the outline in section of recently formed land

upon which the sea has as yet had no action, and C, D is the level

of lowest tides, C′, D′ that of the highest. Between these two

levels, upon the land mass lying between D and D′, is the never

ceasing beat of waves and the wear of silt-carrying currents, so that

in time the land is eaten away along a line a little above C, D, say

X, Y, and a cliff, Y, Z, is formed. We are assuming that the material

of the land is sufficiently coherent to form such a flat and cliff,

but even so in general X, Y becomes a sloping shore, not a flat. It

only remains as a flat if for some reason the seaward surface at X

is protected against further detrition by waves, e.g. by the growth

of corals and stony seaweeds. If they are present, even if their

growth adds nothing to the mass of the rock, it hinders its decay

and causes the formation of a reef flat in place of a sloping shore.

[Illustration: Diagram 5. Formation of fringing reef partly by

growth of coral, partly by cutting down of land]

Now these two processes, addition by growth and abrasion by wave

action, go on simultaneously, and to get at the true method of

formation of a reef flat in the Red Sea the two diagrams must be

combined, as in Diagram 5, where as before F is the raised reef

edge and F, Y the whole extent of the reef flat, and the cliff Z,

Y is undermined as shewn. Where, as in some seas, F to D is recent

growth and X to Y is rather older coral rock, it is impossible to

locate accurately the dividing line between reef formed by recent

growth and that cut out of the land, but near shore, where the

flat is free from mud and sand, its surface is seen to consist of

_sections_ of the constituent shells and corals, cut as cleanly as

if done by a stonemason (see Plate XXXIII). Even such hard shells

as those of the “giant clam,” _Tridacna_, are cut across at the

same level, thus shewing very clearly the origin of the surface by

the planing down of a mass of rock to that level.

The boat channel indicated between F and G remains to be accounted

for. As the reef flat widens it results in a great area covered by

shallow water at high tide level and partly bare at low. Exposed to

a tropic sun life is impossible for any but a few specialised forms,

the rock is unprotected from such wave motion as there is, and from

boring organisms, which agencies quickly reduce its level. Strong

currents also flow over the surface, for the breakers throw water

over the raised edge which may have to travel several miles before

reaching a gap through which it can return to the sea, and this

with tidal currents cause swift rivers of muddy water to flow over

the reef flat parallel with the shore. The obvious result is the

hollowing out of a boat channel[50], and the accumulation in it

of great quantities of mud and sand, which in many places form the

greater part of its actual surface, but which eventually are swept

out to sea.

The presence of certain marine flowering plants of grass-like form

(_Cymodocea_ and other genera) assists, if not wholly responsible

for, the formation of such accumulations by binding the mass together

by their strong and tangled roots and rhizomes.

When the channel has become broad and deep enough, coral growth may

resume sway in it, sometimes to such an extent as almost to block

it up again.

I need offer no proof of the formation of a reef flat and precipice

by coral growth, the thing is obvious, at least in the case of

ordinary fringing reefs. But the hollowing out of the boat channel,

and with it that of other lagoons enclosed by coral, is less

obvious, and it is natural to assign to a feature so distinctive

of coral reefs an origin more directly dependent on the laws of

coral growth. The proof comes from a consideration of the simplest

case. Do we know of any reefs where solution and abrasion have formed

these characteristic features without aid from coral growth? We do.

_Plate XXXIII_

[Illustration: Fig. 72. A portion of a reef flat shewing _sections_

of contained shells]

[Illustration: Fig. 73. The under surface of the same stone

shewing that the reef is composed of a loosely cohering mass of

shells and broken coral. In the centre of the mass is a shell

easily recognisable as one living in abundance nowadays, _Strombus

fasciatus_]

The east coast of the island of Zanzibar is, like that of the Sudan

on the Red Sea, composed entirely of elevated coral. But for some

reason this abundant growth ceased shortly after the elevation of

the island, and the reef edge bears now nothing but a little stony

and filamentous seaweed, and in deeper water forests of sea-grass

(_Cymodocea_). The reef is very wide, up to three miles, the edge

regularly raised, and boat channel, as above mentioned, generally

well developed. On the raised edge of the reef are numbers of stones,

a foot or two in diameter, composed of the same recrystallised

coral rock[51] as the shores and cliffs of the island. Now this rock

differs very widely from that formed of recent coral in its hardness

and weight. Its specific gravity totally forbids the assumption that

these stones were torn from the reef by breakers and cast up in their

present position above low tide level and indeed, though constantly

among them and turning them over to search for specimens of marine

life, I never saw one that had recently been moved by the waves, much

less broken away from some projection of the submarine precipice.

In fact these are the hardest remnants of the mass of rock which

has been removed in the cutting out of the reef, and their presence

proves (1) that this was the mode of formation of the reefs, (2) that

the addition by growth taking place since the elevation of the old

reef has been either nothing or very inconsiderable. Here solution,

attrition, and boring organisms alone have carved out from dead

rock all the features of a reef which has grown up undisturbed[52].

The present flora of the reef edge may have been preceded by a

flora and fauna capable of affording a more efficient protection,

as is at present the case in the adjacent and similar island of

Pemba, where the reef is narrower and consequently cleaner, and

some stunted corals and _Tubipora_ grow on the outer slope of the

reef edge, a position where such species are never found in Zanzibar.

The absence of corals from the outer slope of the reef edge is

remarkable seeing that they flourish in a few places in the boat

channel, so much so in one place as to almost block it up and

form a new reef surface. They flourish too round all the many

sandbanks and islets of the channel which separates Zanzibar from

the mainland of Africa. The mud from the broad reef flat together

with the strong currents that impinge upon these coasts are amply

sufficient to prevent the settlement of the delicate coral larvae,

if not to destroy full-grown colonies.

Another case from the Cape Verde Islands, where reef corals do not

exist at all, is shewn on Plate XXXIV. A reef flat, with raised

definite edge and miniature boat channel complete, has been cut

out of sandstone, the edge of which was protected by a growth

of stony seaweed (lithothamnia), and vast numbers of the shelly

tubes of that strange animal _Vermetus_[53]. These two organisms

combine to form a continuous crust over the whole surface of the

seaward edge of the sandstone, and so greatly delay its removal

by the sea, but landwards, this protection being absent, the reef

flat is hollowed out into a “boat channel.” This sandstone is

a local deposit just to the south-west of the town of St Vincent,

but the volcanic rocks of which the island is composed are cut down

to a narrow flat in the same way, but less regularly.

_Plate XXXIV_

[Illustration: Fig. 74. A sandstone reef near St Vincent, Cape

Verde Islands]

[Illustration: Fig. 75. An embryo fringing reef near Ramleh,

Alexandria]

A third case, from the Mediterranean near Alexandria, is so striking

as to be worth illustrating, though only the embryo of a reef, as

it were a ledge a few yards wide, has been formed as yet. The rock

is a calcareous sandstone, a consolidated dune, and the protecting

organisms are much the same as those found in the Cape Verde Islands,

but here forming a less coherent coating to the rock. The regularity

of the ledge laid bare by the retreat of a wave is very striking.

Reefs may shew other features, no one arrangement can be taken

as typical of all. Instead of the smooth slope and rounded ridge

which compose the reef edge on this coast and that of Zanzibar it

is usual, in many oceanic reefs, for the growing edge to be cut

into by deep and narrow fissures, up which the great breakers send

violent torrents of water.

The land, or reef islands, may be either portions of the

reef elevated above sea level, containing fossil corals in the

positions in which they grow, or it may be partly formed of a mass

of corals thrown up by storms backed generally by an accumulation

of sand. The coral rock thus elevated may be, as in the Red Sea,

but little different from the original material of which it was

formed, but more generally it is much altered. The continual

wetting by spray or rain and drying under the tropical sun has a

very marked effect in hardening and consolidating elevated coral,

or coral sand. The upper parts are dissolved, and as the water

sinks into the porous corals and becomes supersaturated with lime,

the latter is crystallised out, thus filling up all cavities

with _crystalline_ limestone. Thus in the end the highly porous

heterogeneous limestone becomes a rock of exceeding hardness,

crystalline and homogeneous. All the more delicate organisms are

dissolved, only the largest remaining recognisable. At the same time

as sea-water contains magnesium carbonate as well as limestone, and

the former is less soluble than the latter, it tends to be deposited

more quickly, so that it comes to replace the original limestone

to some extent[54]. The alteration in the external appearance of

the rock is very marked. Instead of the yellow, rather shapeless,

cliffs of the Red Sea coast, in most other parts of the world,

where tides supply spray and there is a considerable rainfall,

we have coal-black rock with a very peculiar surface, all covered

with sharp points and knife edges separating depressions left by

the solution of the stone by water, hence the name “coral rag”

applied to such rock. Where it forms the shore of a sheltered bay

its homogeneity causes the undermining by the sea to go on to an

astonishing extent before the unsupported piece falls away from the

cliff to which it is attached. Such projections of the rocks which

may be much longer than those shewn on Plate XXXV, also illustrate

the hardness of this recrystallised material, for on striking one

with a hammer a loud clear bell-like note is produced. Given the

right conditions and we have the same peculiar result in the Red

Sea and even in the Mediterranean. For instance, a considerable

swell breaks at times on the narrow reef fringing the east side

of the Tella Tella Kebir Islands, thus keeping the cliff behind it

drenched with spray. In consequence the rock has become like that of

Zanzibar and British East Africa. And generally, wherever the coral

rock is exposed to spray it takes on these characters partially

or completely, as is the case at the bases of all the cliffs along

a narrow band just about sea level, where the rock is “’twixt

wind and water.” Here the outer part is converted into a black,

hard, and pitted crust, higher up it is harder than normal but

above gradually passes into the slightly altered rock of the normal

cliffs. Such a crust also covers the reef flats of the Red Sea,

the reef within consisting, as before noted, of loose masses of

coral bedded in with shells and sand. A portion of this crust is

photographed on Plate XXXIII; the upper surface (Fig. 72) with its

_sections_ of contained shells has already been referred to. It is

nearly smooth and very hard. The under side of the same fragment

is shewn in the next figure and is seen to consist of an irregular

mass of shells and coral branches lightly cemented to the crust,

from between which the sand, which has not been consolidated, has

fallen away. The formation of beach sandstone is practically the same

process of cementation, by alternate solution and deposition of lime,

taking place in a mass of shell and coral sand instead of larger

fragments, the rock following exactly the curve of the sandbank, of

which it is obviously a part which has been consolidated _in situ_.

_Plate XXXV_

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Figs. 76 and 77. Coral Cliffs, Zanzibar]

Fig. 76. Chuaka Bay. Note undermining of fallen fragments

„ 77. Bawi Island. Rock masses supported by narrow stalks

Coral reefs are classified into three sets according to their

relation with other land[55].

I. _Fringing reefs_, which, as the name implies, border the land,

are continuous with it, and the seaward edge of which can be reached

by wading.