Darwin’s description of the island of Cocos, or Keeling, is as follows:—“The ring‐formed reef of the lagoon island is surmounted in the greater part of its length by linear islets. On the northern or leeward side there is an opening through which vessels can pass to the anchorage within. On entering, the scene was very curious and rather pretty; its beauty, however, entirely depended on the brilliancy of the surrounding colours. The shallow, clear, and still water of the lagoon, resting in its greater part on white sand, is, when illuminated by a vertical sun, of the most vivid green. This brilliant expanse, several miles in width, is on all sides divided, either by a line of snow‐white breakers from the dark heaving waters of the ocean, or from the blue vault of heaven by the strips of land crowned by the level tops of the cocoa‐nut tree. As a white cloud here and there affords a pleasing contrast to the azure sky, so in the lagoon bands of living coral darken the emerald‐green water. “The next morning I went ashore on Direction Island. The strip of dry land is only a few hundred yards in width; on the lagoon side there was a white calcareous beach, the radiation from which, under this sultry climate, was very oppressive. On the outer coast, a solid, broad, flat coral rock served to break the violence of the open sea. Excepting near the lagoon, where there is some sand, the land is entirely composed of rounded fragments of coral. In such a loose, dry, stony soil, the climate of the intertropical regions alone could produce so vigorous a vegetation. “On some of the smaller islets nothing could be more elegant than the manner in which the young and full‐grown cocoa‐nut trees, without destroying each other’s symmetry, were mingled into one wood. A beach of glittering white sand formed a border to those fairy spots.”