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sometimes separated by narrow channels, and sometimes assuming the character of real islands only at high water, being mostly connected with the main land by very shallow flats. This is especially the case along the southwestern extremity of the peninsula. The outline of the southern shore, however, between Cape Florida and Cape Sable, is better defined-presenting, in almost unbroken continuity, steep bluffs of the same coral limestone which forms the bottom of the everglades, and may be traced, without interruption, along the Miami from the seashore to the everglades.

South of the main land, between it and the range of keys, there are extensive flats, which, even at high water, are but slightly covered, and which the retreat of the tide lays bare, leaving only narrow and shallow channels between the dry flats, with occasional depressions of greater depth. These mud flats extend not only between the main land and the keys as far as Cape Sable, but may be traced to the north along the western shores of the continent, and to the west along the northern shores of the keys, not only as far as Key West and the Marquesas, but even to the Tortugas.

There is, however, this remark to be made-that to the west the mud flats become covered, by degrees, with deeper and deeper water; or, in other words, that these low grounds, extending between the main land and the main range of keys, dip slightly to the west, being gradually lost in the shoals extending north of the Marquesas and the Tortugas, along the western shore of the peninsula. These flats are interspersed with innumerable low islands, known in the country by the generic appellation of the Mangrove islands, respecting which we shall give further details hereafter.

The shoals between Cape Sable, Cape Florida, and the main range of keys, are literally studded with these Mangrove islands. Sometimes they are distributed without apparent regularity; sometimes, as to the north of Key Largo, they form a continuous range between the main land and the keys. They are also very numerous along the main keys, or at least along that side of them which is turned towards the most extensive mud flats. Sometimes these Mangrove islands form little archipelagoes of innumerable small islets, so intimately interwoven, and separated by such narrow and shallow channels, as to be almost impenetrable. Such archipelagoes occur chiefly to the north of Bahia Honda and the Pine islands, as well as to the northwest of Key West. The luxuriant vegetation which rises from these low islands, consisting chiefly of mangroves, gives them a very peculiar appearance. We shall have occasion to return to this subject, when we attempt to explain the formation of the different islands connected with the Florida reef and the main land. The whole tract between Cape Sable and the keys, east of Bahia Honda, as far as Cape Florida, or at least as far as Soldier key, is so shoal that it will forever remain inaccessible, except to very small vessels.

The keys consist of an extensive range of low islands, rising but a few feet, perhaps from six to eight or ten, or at the utmost to twelve or thirteen feet, above the level of the sea. They begin to the north of Cape Florida, where they converge towards the main land, extending in the form of a flat crescent in a southwesterly direction, gradually

receding from the main land until, opposite Cape Sable, they have so far retreated as to be separated from it by a shallow sheet of water forty miles wide. Farther to the west they project in a more westerly course, with occasional interruptions, as far as the Tortugas, which form the most western group. They consist either of accumulated dead corals, of coral rocks, or of coral sand, cemented together with more or less compactness. Their form varies, but is usually elongated and narrow, their greatest longitudinal extent following the direction of the main range, except in the group of the Pine islands, where their course is almost at right-angles with the main range-a circumstance which we shall attempt hereafter to explain.

Most of these islands are small, the largest of them, such as Key West and Key Largo, not exceeding ten or fifteen miles in length; others only two or three, and many scarcely a mile. Their width varies from a quarter to a third or half a mile, the largest barely measuring a mile across; but whatever the difference in their size, they all agree in one respect-that their steepest shore is turned towards the Gulf Stream, while their more gradual slope inclines towards the mud flats which they encircle.

This is a point which it is important to notice, as it will assist us in our comparison between the keys and the shore bluffs of the main land, as well as with the outer reef and the reefs of other seas, in all of which we find that the seaward shore is steeper than that turned towards the main land, or, in the case of circular reefs enclosing basins (atolls,) than that which borders the lagoon.

The reef proper extends parallel to the main range of keys, for a few miles south or southeast of it, following the same curve, and never receding many miles from it. The distance between the reef and the main range of keys varies usually from six to two or three miles, the widest separation being south of Key West and east of the Ragged keys, where the space is about seven miles. Between this reef, upon which a few small keys rise at distant intervals, and the main range of keys already described, there is a broad, navigable channel, extending the whole length of the reef from the Marquesas to Cape Florida, varying in depth from three to six and seven fathoms, and, except off Looe key, where the passage is not more than fourteen feet deep at low water, averaging from three to four fathoms.

Farther east the average depth is again the same as at Looe key; but it becomes gradually more and more shoal towards the east, measuring usually about two fathoms, or even less, to the east of Long key and Key Largo, but deepening again somewhat towards Cape Florida, where the reef converges towards the main keys and the main land. Protected by the outer reef, this channel affords a very safe navigation to vessels of medium size, and would allow a secure anchorage almost everywhere throughout the whole length of the reef, were the numerous deep channels which intersect the outer reef well known to navigators and marked by a regular system of signals. As it is, however, the reef seems to present an unbroken range of most dangerous shoal grounds, upon which thousands of vessels, as well as millions of property, have already been wrecked. These facts have a stronger claim upon the attention of the government, since there are, as already re

marked, numerous passages across the reef which might enable even the largest vessels to find shelter and safe anchorage behind this threatening shallow barrier.

The reef proper, as we have remarked above, runs almost parallel to the main range of keys from Cape Florida to the western extremity of the Marquesas, where it is lost in the deep. It follows in its whole extent the same curve as the keys, encircling to the seaward the ship channel already mentioned. This is properly the region of living

corals.

Throughout its whole range it does not reach the surface of the sea, except in a few points where it comes almost within the level of lowwater-mark, giving rise to heavy breakers, such as Carysfort, Alligator reef, Tennessee reef, and a few other shoals of less extent, but perhaps not less dangerous. In a few localities fragments of dead coral and coral sand begin to accumulate upon the edges of the reef, forming small keys, which vary in form and position according to the influence of gales blowing from different directions-sometimes in the direction of the Gulf Stream from southwest to northeast, but more frequently in the opposite direction, the prevailing winds blowing from the northeast. Such are Sombrero key, Looe key, the Sambos, and Sand key. Here and there are isolated coral boulders, which present projecting masses above water, such as the Dry Rocks, west of Sand key; Pelican reef, east of it; with many others, more isolated. Though continuous, the outer reef is, however, not so uniforin as not to present many broad passages over its crest, dividing it, as it were, into many submarine elongated hillocks, similar in form to the main keys, but not rising above water, and in which the depressions alluded to correspond to the channels intersecting the keys. These broad passages leading into the ship channel, which may be available as entrances into the safe anchorage within the reef, are chiefly the inlet in front of Key Largo and to the west of Carysfort reef, with nine feet of water; a passage between French reef and Pickle reef, with ten feet; another between Conch reef and Crocus reef, also with ten feet; another between Crocus reef and Alligator reef, with two fathoms; another between Alligator reef and Tennessee reef, with two fathoms and a half; and a sixth to the west of Tennessee reef, varying in depth from two and a half to three fathoms.

The remark which has been made respecting the mud flats and their gradual deepening from east to west, applies equally to the general features of the main reef, as well as to the intervening channel. To the eastward the channel is shallower, the ground around the keys and reef becomes shoaler, and there is a gradual dip towards the west, which makes the connexion less marked between the keys west of Key West, in the large groups of the so-called Mangrove islands, and the Marquesas, beyond which there is even an extensive interruption in the succession of the keys before we reach the Tortugas. These last, however, as well as the bank west of these keys, belong none the less to the main range of keys, from which they are only separated by a more extensive and deeper depression. West of Sand key the reef itself becomes gradually less elevated, until it is finally lost where the

ship channel, south of the Marquesas, expands into the broad depression, separating that group of keys and shoals from the Tortugas.

In order to understand fully not only the topography, but also the mode of formation of all these keys and reefs, it must be remembered that the rising reefs, which form more or less continuous walls, reaching at unequal heights nearly to the surface, or above the level of the waters, are only a particular modification of those formations growing upon coral grounds under special circumstances. It has been ascertained, whenever similar investigations have been made, that living corals do not occur in depths exceeding twenty fathoms, that the reefbuilding species prosper from a depth of about twelve fathoms nearly to the surface, and that different species follow each other at successive heights. Now, if we keep in mind these facts, we shall see that all the coral-bound islands of the West Indies, as well as of the main land of Central America, constitute an extensive coral field, divided by broad, deep channels, over which the coral reefs extend, with different features, according to the depths in which they occur and the changes which their own growth has gradually introduced upon the localities where they are found, influenced and modified to some extent also by the direction of the prevailing currents and the action of the tides.

The formation of the main range of keys in their primitive condition as a reef-for, as we shall see hereafter, they have been a sub-marine reef before they rose as islands above the level of the ocean-the formation of this range, we repeat, at gradually greater distances from the main land, as we follow their course from east to west, has been simply owing to the depth of the bottom from which the reef has risen. It has followed the line of ten or twelve fathoms depth; and if there is so wide an interruption between the Marquesas and the Tortugas, it is because the ground is deeper over that space. Again, if the Pine islands have a northwesterly direction, while the main range runs more from east to west, it is no doubt because the body of water emptying from the northern part of the gulf, along the western shores of the peninsula, has, for a time, run chiefly over that field, while the tract of mud flats between the keys and the main land was filling prior to the formation of the outer reef, the rising of which, as an external barrier, must have modified greatly the course of the currents north of the keys at a later period, leaving between them only a few narrow but navigable channels, such as exist now between the Marquesas and the Mangrove islands, between these and Key West, and between the Pine islands and the group of Bahia Honda.

We would only add that the absence of corals along the western shore of the peninsula, at present, is probably owing to the character which that shore has assumed in the progress of time, for the peninsula itself has once been a reef, at least as far as the 28th degree of north latitude, as is shown by the investigation of the everglades, and by the examination of the rocks at St. Augustine.

This latitude is the natural northern limit of the formation of coral reefs, as also of the extensive growth of stony corals; though on the southern shores of the North American continent, these formations seem to have extended far beyond their usual bounds, probably under the in

fluence of the high temperature of the Gulf Stream, for not only do the narrow, longitudinal islands which extend along the eastern shore, and their direct connexion with the small keys north of Cape Florida, indicate their coralline origin, but we have even under the 32d degree of north latitude extensive coral formations at the Bermudas still flourishing in the present day. If the growth of corals has been stopped along the eastern shore, it must be ascribed to the invasion of drift sand, which extends over the everglades, as well as along the eastern shores as far south as the Miami, Key Biscayne, and the bay of the Miami.

Mode of formation of the reef.

The reefs of Florida as they have been described in the foregoing sketch of the topography of that State, and, indeed, the separate parts of each of these reefs, in their extensive range from northeast to southwest, present such varieties as will afford, when judiciously combined, a complete history of the whole process of their formation.

Here we have groups of living corals, beginning to expand at considerable depth, and forming isolated, disconnected patches, the first rudiments, as it were, of an extensive new reef. There we have a continuous range of similar corals in unbroken continuity for miles, or even hundreds of miles, rising at unequal heights nearly to the surface.

Here and there a few heads or large patches, or even extensive flats of corals, reach the level of low-water mark, and may occasionally be scen above the surface of the waters, when the sea is more agitated than by the simple action of the tides. In other places coral sands or loose fragments of corals, larger or smaller boulders, detached from lower parts of the living reef, are thrown upon its dying summits, and thus form the first accumulation of solid materials, rising permanently above low-water mark; collected sometimes in such quantities and at such heights as to remain dry, stretching their naked heads above high water. In other places these accumulations of loose, dead materials have entirely covered the once living corals, as far as the eye can reach into the depth of the ocean: no sign of life is left, except perhaps here and there an isolated bunch of some of those species of corals which naturally grow scattered, or of those other organisms which congregate around or upon coral reefs; but the increase of the reef by the natural growth of the reef-building corals is at an end. Again, in other places, by the further accumulation of such loose materials, and the peculiar mode of aggregation which results from the action of the sea upon them, and which will be more fully explained hereafter, extensive islands are formed, ranging in the direction of the main land, which support them. Elsewhere we may find the whole extent of the reef thus covered, which, after a still more protracted accumulation, perhaps becomes united with some continental shore.

Now it must be obvious, that from a comparison of so many separate stages of the growth of a coral reef, a correct insight may be obtained into the process of its formation; and, indeed, in thus alluding to the different localities which came under our own observation, we have

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