ngle one of her
two hundred and seventy-five passengers escaping a watery grave. Her
tall masts, still standing bolt upright amid the coral-reefs, presented
a gaunt spectacle, plainly visible from the Hero's decks as she threaded
her way among the shoaly waters, while a similar though less tragical
warning was the disaster that had overtaken two other vessels, the
Astrolabe and the Zelee, which by a sudden ebb of the tide were thrown
high and dry upon the sands, and remained in this frightful condition
for eight days before the returning waters drifted them off. But the
Hero was a staunch craft--an iron blockade-runner, built at Glasgow
during our late war. She was of twelve hundred tons burden, manned by
forty-two men, and had already weathered storms and dangers enough to
earn a right to the name she bore. Right nobly she fulfilled her
dangerous mission, threading her way with difficulty among whole fields
of coral, that sometimes almost enclosed her low hull as between two
walls; again seeming upon the very verge of the breakers or ready to be
engulfed in their whirling eddies, but emerging at last into the open
channel, a monument of the skill and watchfulness of her officers. Many
of these for days together never left the deck, and the lead was cast
three or four times an hour during the whole passage of these dangerous
seas. Such is the history of navigation in coral seas, but if full of
danger, they are equally replete with picturesque beauty. In the coral
isle, with its blue lagoon, its circling reef and smiling vegetation,
there is a wondrous fascination; while in the long reefs, with the ocean
driving furiously upon them, only to be driven pitilessly back, all
wreathed in white foam and diamond spray, there is enough of the sublime
to transfix the most careless observer. The barrier reef that skirts the
north-east coast of the Australian continent is the grandest coral
formation in the world, stretching for a distance of a thousand miles,
with a varying breadth of from two hundred yards to a mile. The maximum
distance from the shore is seventy miles, but it rarely exceeds
twenty-five or thirty. Between this and the mainland lies a sheltered
channel, safe, for the most part, when reached; but there are few open
passages from the ocean, and the shoals of imperfectly-formed coral that
lie concealed just below the surface render the most watchful care
necessary to a safe passage. The fires of the cannibals, visible