94 " ALBATROSS " TROPICAL PACIFIC EXPEDITION. 



base ; it is honeycombed and pitted where exposed to tlie action of the 

 sea and weather, and where the modern beach and conglomerate boulders 

 have been swept off or eroded from its surface. The east face, south of 

 the islets, is a reef flat bare at low water, .with a great many shallow gaps 

 through which water flows into the lagoon even at the lowest tides. 



Takume is, like other atolls of the group, a narrow pear-shaped ridge, widest 

 opposite Raroia, its lagoon gouged out in part by the action of the sea, or in 

 part shut off from the sea by sand banks and shingle beaches formed in the 

 lagoon on the reef platform. 



At dusk, when laying to off the south point of Takume, we could see the 

 whole atoll stretching to the northward as plainly as if it had been charted 

 out. The line of numerous wooded islands and islets flanking the western 

 face of the atoll extends about fourteen miles in a northeasterly direction in 

 a large arc somewhat convex to the west, while on the east face parallel 

 with these runs the low bare reef flat with its three small islets separated by 

 the shallow and narrow lagoon of the atoll. The reef flat is widest near the 

 northeast horn ; the southern coast forms a curve which gives to the atoll 

 a slightly pear-shaped outline. 



Lookino- across the narrow lagoon from off the east face, the wide bare 

 reef flat separated by the .shallow water from the islands and islets of the 

 western face presented all the appearance of a narrow secondary lagoon, only 

 somewhat wider, such as we have described for Anaa and other atolls of the 

 group. 



Raroia. 



Plates 201, 203. 



Raroia Island, like Tahanea, was discovered by Bellingshausen. It is 

 very lightly wooded on the east side, but the west and north sides, along 

 which we skirted, are well covered with vegetation. This atoll and Takume 

 to the north of it have a soutli westerly to northeasterly trend (Pis. 201, 203), a 

 direction opposite to that of all the islands of the Paumotus we have thus far 

 examined. 



Raroia is about twenty miles long ; it is a narrow, elliptical, somewhat 

 pear-shaped atoll, not more than six miles at its greatest width, in the 



