352 "ALBATEOSS" TROPICAL PACIFIC EXPEDITION. 



The Royalist Islands. 



Plates 190, fig. J^; 231, 232. 



The Royalist Islands^ are an elongated atoll, a satellite of Truk 

 (PI. 231), of an irregularly rectangular shape, about eleven miles in 

 lentrth and five across the southern face. The northern extremitv is 

 not more than a mile and a half from the !-outhern point of the barrier 

 reef of Truk, and separated from it by a deep channel. Two passages 

 lead into the lagoon, one at the southern, the other at the northern 

 extremity. The northern passage is flanked on the east by Givry Island. 

 Hacq Island is in the central part of the eastern barrier reef flat, South 

 Island (PI. 190, fig. 4) is at the southernmost point of the atoll, to the 

 west of the southern passage. The south side of Fanek Island, on the 

 north side of the southern passage, is composed of a long line of yellow 

 coral boulders and covered wirth low vegetation, the beach rock extending 

 on the outer end of the reef flat, with here and there a larger coral boulder 

 thrown up by the sea. In the Royalist Islands the vegetation everywhere 

 reaches close to the coral boulders scattered on the wide reef flat. A 

 narrow belt of deep water extends along the western face of the northern 

 land rim of the atoll.^ The wide reef flat forming the southern part of 

 the lagoon is full of patches, reaches, and bands of shallow water, with 

 here and there a cluster of large coral blocks, especially near the northern 

 and western extremities. The reef flat is from two thirds to three fourths 

 of a mile in width. Far beyond the northern horn of the Royalist lagoon 

 we could see to the north the high peaks of Truk, and to the west the 

 high islands in the western part of its lagoon. On reaching the north- 

 ern end of Royalist atoll, we found the western edge of the reef flat 

 flanked with an extraordinary line of huge coral boulders, honeycombed 

 and undercut, forming ledges of the most fantastic outline, extending to 

 the extremity of the western horn of the atoll. 



1 H. O. Chart 425. 

 » A. Chart 982. 



