THE PACIFIC OCEAN GENERAL CHARACTER OF ITS COASTS As will be seen from an examination of the accom panying map, the coast-line of the Pacific is on the whole very little indented. Its eastern shores are, with the excep tion of the Gulf of California, regular and unbroken ; its western coast is more broken, forming several considerable peninsulas and gulfs. From Tierra del Fuego to Valdivia, in the south of Chili, the islands of the Patagonian Archi pelago fringe the coast, and seem like "fragments detached from the Andes ; " their seaward sides being generally high and rocky. The coasts of Chili and Peru are on the whole steep and rugged, but with occasional low sandy beaches. The whole western coast of America as far as Costa Rica preserves a general parallelism to the lofty range of the Andes, which are nowhere far from the sea. With the single exception of the Gulf of Guayaquil, there are no inlets of any magnitude, and but few good harbours. Both Chili and Peru are subject to most violent volcanic disturb ances. Lima in 1746, and Concepcion in 1835, were almost destroyed by earthquakes. The Pacific coast of Central America is generally steep, but that of Mexico is low and unhealthy. The Gulf of California is the only considerable inlet on the western coast of the American continent ; thence north to Vancouver the coast is generally high and unindented, the Bay of St. Francisco being the largest, and commercially
the most important. From Vancouver to N. lat. the coast is broken, and fringed by numerous islands, several of them of large size. Thence to the extreme point of the Alaska peninsula the coast is generally bold and rugged ; but from Bristol Bay to Kotzebue Sound it is low and swampy, irregular, and considerably indented.
The irregular configuration of the eastern coast of Asia, and the line of islands skirting it, have been already noticed. The enclosed seas of Behring, Okhotsk, Japan, and China, are generally shallow ; but, contrary to the general law of depth, the coasts are on the whole lofty, except at the mouths of the larger rivers. A characteristic feature of this coast is the occurrence of three large peninsulas, all trending in the same general direction—viz., those of Kamtchatka, Corea, and Malacca. The east coast of Australia being skirted by continuous and moderately lofty ridges, have their steep slope towards the Pacific, and is therefore generally rugged and unbroken. The Great Barrier Reef extends for upwards of a thousand miles along this coast, at a distance varying from sixty to one hundred miles. The coast itself is generally regular and unbroken, but with a few inlets that form good harbours, such as Moreton Bay and Port Jackson.'