IN TIMOR-LAUT. 333 



the Peak of Laibubar. This mountain symmetrically conical 

 in form, rises out of the sea on an islet on the west coast, fmd 

 is, judging by the eye, somewhere about 2000 feet in height. 

 I have little doubt that it will be found to be an extinct or 



dormant crater. I was shown by the natives a piece of 



pumice stone, used by them to polish their spearheads, wliich 

 they say floats into their bay after nortIi(^rly and westerly 

 winds. Possibly some of it may be washed into the sea off 

 the slopes of this mountain during the rainy season. Further 

 experience showed me that the whole of the mainland of 

 Yamdena, as f\ir as my excursions extended, was also of coral, 

 which formed precipitous clifls nearly all round the islands, 

 in some places as much as sixty to eighty feet in height ; but 

 about Egeron Strait the coast is said to rise about four 

 hundred feet 



I was early struck with the fact that everywhere the island 

 was composed of coral, and that the vegetation grew on the 

 scantiest possible soil. No rock of a sedimentary or granitoid 

 character could I detect anywhere on the islet of Larat. I 

 had at first thought that a stratified-like mass near our rcsi- 

 dence had that character, but on closer examination it turns 

 out to be entirely non-arenaceous. 



There are no mountains in the islands, and no fresh water 

 streams. All our so-called fresh water was skimmed off the 

 surface of holes made in the coral, and was brackish and un- 

 palatable. On the mainland, however, I noticed at points 

 slightly above high-water mark fresher water than that found 

 in Larat, flowing, it seemed, from springs. 



The whole of the northern portion of the islands, therefore, 

 appears to have been recently elevated or is perhaps still 

 being so, after a long submersion below the sea. 



The cliffs are all of coral, and the shore at low tide is 

 formed of the stumps of elevated branched corals, and in 

 many places a flat floor of hard concrete like what I saw in 



the Keeling: atoll. 



o'>. 



