To such accusations as these, our innocent shoal-makers reply--"Time--give us only time, and these rocks will become hospitable, tenanted, fruitful. These banks, joined on to their neighboring banks, will no longer have these terrible threatenings for the seaman. We are preparing a spare world to replace your old one should it perish. Ingrates! Come some great and overwhelming catastrophe to your old world, if, as some one among you has said, the sea turns from one pole to the other in every ten thousand years, and you perchance will bless us, and hail with joy these southern isles which we are making, this huge southern continent that we are preparing. Confess, now, that if, unhappily, ships do occasionally perish on these shoals, our work here, nevertheless, is useful, and good, and great. Our improvised world may not unjustly be proud. To say nothing about the beauty of its triumphant colors, before which those of your earth grow pale; to say nothing about the graceful curves and circles on which we pride ourselves,--how many are the problems, which, insolvable to you, find their solution among us! The division of labor, a charming variety combined with a great regularity, a geometrical order, softened and made graceful and gracious by a rising liberty--where, among you men, will you find these so combined as from the beginning we have combined them among us? Our incessant labor in relieving the sea-water of its salts, creates those currents which give it life and healthful power. We are the very spirits of the Sea, giving, as we do, her motion." "And the sea is not ungrateful; she nourishes us at fixed periods; and not less punctually comes the glowing sun to caress us and dower us with brilliant colors. We are the beloved, the favored workers of the Deity, entrusted by him with the first rude sketches and outlines of his worlds, and all our juniors upon this globe, need us, and are indebted to us. Our friend the Cocoa tree, that inaugurates terrestrial life upon our isle, could not do so but from our dust. In its far back origin, vegetable life is our liberal gift, and, made rich by us, it nourishes the superior creation." "But what need of other animals? We are within our own circle complete, harmonious and sufficing; with us the circle of creation might be closed. For as God crowns his isle on his old volcano of fire, he has created a volcano of life, and expansion of that living paradise. He has created all that he needs, and now He may repose."