284 "ALBATROSS" TROPICAL PACIFIC EXPEDITION. 



The village of Jabor is on the west side on the widest part of the 

 island of Jaluit (PI. 228, fig. 2) ; the wider land rim forming the extremity 

 of the island has been formed by the washing to the westward of mate- 

 rial from the outer southern face of the entrance to Jaluit, and thus 

 little by little the fiat upon which Jabor is built has expanded. One can 

 see how the western shore line is gradually extending into the lagoon, 

 forming, near the coal wharf, a long spit made up of small shingle and 

 more or less coarse coral sand, gradually moving around the northwest 

 point of the island during the season of the trades. The beach so formed 

 is fully three feet higher than the island itself. Near our anchorage we 

 could see masses of sand blown across the narrow land rim into the lagoon 

 and distributed by the winds and the drift of the tides over the bottom of 

 the lagoon. The flat of the northern extremity of Jaluit Island is barren ; 

 the ground is covered with small fragments of corals and beach rock 

 conglomerate, more or less weathered and edged on the lagoon side, to 

 the south of the northern point forming the harbor, by a fine sand beach ; 

 this to the south of the settlement passes into the beach rock ledge of the 

 lagoon shore (PI. 162, fig. 4) ; the ledge has a steep face, and is eaten and 

 honeycombed and weathered by atmospheric agencies and by the action of 

 the sea fully as much, only on a small scale, as some of the most char- 

 acteristic of the elevated coral reef rock ledges in other parts of the 

 Pacific. 



Immediately back of Jabor are two fresh-water lagoons, or rather brack- 

 ish lagoons, formed by the throwing up on the lagoon face of low beaches, 

 and thus isolated from the inroads, both of the waters of the lagoon and 

 of the sea (PI. 166, fig. 2). They rise and fall with the action of the tides, 

 showing how loose or porous the dam of the narrow land rim is. These 

 sinks ^ supply a large amount of the water used by the natives ; immediately 

 around the edges of some of the sinks mangroves are growing. 



The reef flat to the south of the wharf is made up of beach conglomerate 

 gradually disintegrating and forming flats covered with larger and smaller 

 fragments, either of dead corals or of beach rock conglomerate (PI. 162, 



■ One of the prettiest sinks that exist in the Marshall Islands is found on the island of Eniibor, 

 a photograph of which has been taken by Mrs. Brandeis (PI. 166, fig. 1). 



