296 NEW HEBRIDES. 



flat land at the bottom of the valley on which some cocoanut 

 palms and another species of palm were conspicuous amongst 

 the other foliage. As we came near natives appeared on the 

 shore, some hiding in the bushes, others running along at full 

 speed, whilst some shouted a loud " hoa." One man stood on 

 the shore and waved a green branch with untiring perseverance. 



These natives were said to be hostile and dangerous, and 

 therefore the first party, the Captain's, which landed, was armed, 

 but the returned labourers acted as an introduction and made 

 matters smooth ; still, as all the natives were armed, either 

 with bows and poisoned arrows, clubs, or trade muskets, and 

 as the inhabitants of these islands are noted for treachery, no 

 one was allowed to leave the beach, and our stay lasted for 

 only a few hours. Thus we saw very little of this island, which 

 had certainly never been landed upon before by any scientific 

 man or naval officer. 



The shore is made up of a banked-up beach, composed of 

 small fragments of volcanic rock and volcanic sand, mingled 

 with a large proportion of coral fragments, and is fringed by 

 a narrow shore platform of coral, which, in the place where I 

 examined it, was not much more than 100 yards wide. The 

 New Hebrides have no barrier reefs, but only narrow fringing 

 reefs. Dana concludes that this is due to the fact that volcanic 

 action has, in this group of islands, been very recent. There 

 are still several active volcanoes in the group, and one was 

 said by our returned labourers to exist in Api. (The word Api 

 means in Malay, " fire "). Submarine ejections of carbonic 

 acid and the falling of fine dust might render the growing of 

 reef corals round an active volcanic island nearly impossible. 



The Api shore reef is remarkable for its extreme flatness. 

 Almost everywhere the living corals embedded in it are growing 

 only laterally, the upper surfaces being dead from want of suffi- 

 cient depth of water. In some small specimens of a massive 

 Porites the consequent flattening of the top and expansion of 

 the lateral dimensions was most excellently shown in pieces 

 convenient for museum purposes. 



The Corals, which were few in number of species, were finer 

 grown towards the outer verge of the reef, as is always the 

 case on shore platforms, the very opposite condition to that 

 which holds in case of barrier reefs. In some places were deep 

 holes in the coral platform, reminding one of glacier crevasses 

 on a small scale, evidently arising from the loose nature of the 

 sloping beach on which the coral structure here rests. On the 

 reef rest weathered remains of a more ancient shore platform 

 which are honey-combed and wave-worn. The rock composing 

 them is, however, undoubtedly /// situ^ and proves elevation of 



