206 "ALBATHOSS" TROPICAL PACIFIC EXPEDITI02f. 



Kambara. 



Plates IJG, 1J7, 2W. 



On opening the south point of Kambara we eonld readily trace 

 three terraces ; they could also be made out indistinctly on the north 

 point. We visited Kambara^ in order to examine again the basin or sink 

 of the island. We ascended the volcanic cone rising to the south of 

 Tokalau Village, to a iieight of about 470 feet, and which forms the most 

 prominent object of Kambara. The cone has burst through the outer 

 rim of elevated coralliferous limestone (Pis. 126, 127) ; it rises nearly 150 

 feet higher than any other part of the rim of the central basin of Kambara. 

 It was veiy evident that this basin is a basin of erosion, and not the basin 

 of an elevated atoll (Pis. 126, fig. 2; 127, fig. 1). It must have formed 

 like other sounds we have described in Fiji, like those of Fulanga, of 

 Yangasa, of Ongea, of Namuka, Wangava," and many others. One of the 

 gaps which formerly gave access to the sea to the old sink, or formed an 

 outlet to the sound once occupying the centre of the island, can still be 

 distinguished immediately behind the village of Tokalau (PI. 127, fig. 2), 

 and others at one or two points on the eastern and on the southwestern 

 rim of the sink of Kambara. In fact, as we have shown in a former 

 report on the Fiji Islands,'^ I consider Naiau and Tuvutha, as well as the 

 i.slands we have just mentioned, to be merely elevated j^lfiteaus, or 

 irregular masses of coralliferous limestone, or plateaus with incipient 

 sounds, which have also been denuded and eroded by atmospheric agencies 

 to form sinks imitating to a certain extent the elevated lagoon of an atoll. 

 It is evident that an elevated lagoon would be far deeper than the sinks 



I A. Chart 441. 



'^ The top of Wangava shows a slight depression ; as seen from the top of the volcanic conu of Kam- 

 bara it appears like a hat, the broad brim of which is the reef platform, surrounding the island on all 

 sides (PI. 127), with a shallow sink formed b_v the outer edges of the rim. At first sight Wangava 

 appears to be an elevated atoll, vet on comparing the sinks of Kambara and Wangava with the sounds 

 and lagoons, the formation of which has been so carefully traced in many of the Fiji Islands, there is no 

 reason to consider such islands as Wangava, Kambara, Naiau, Tuvutha, as other than elevated plateaus 

 at different stages in the formation of sounds, the sinks of which have been denuded and eroded after 

 their elevation or during its process. 



3 Bull. M. C. Z., XXXIII., 1899, p. 52. 



