330 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



were daily overwhelmed with them, and sent them off 

 usually happy and full of food and presents. 



The scenery is also very beautiful, so that all in all 

 we are enjoying every minute and glad to have done 

 the outlying and most distant parts, so that now we shall 

 be within easy reach of Suva in case of a blow. 



1 left my party for boring at Wailangilala, where 

 they are well settled for six weeks; when I left them 

 they had got going to eighteen feet in sand. But I look 

 upon this boring as a mere experiment. Boring to be of 

 any good must be in a recent coral reef like that of 

 Florida or a fringingf reef like that of Honolulu — 

 where outside conditions have had no influence, and I 

 shall tackle that some time and some where. 



By the way, David, in a letter I find here, says the 

 reef proper was only forty feet ! x Judging by the re- 

 porters' accounts in the papers, they made it the full 

 depth of the bore, but I shall give them a dose they do 

 not expect, and the theory of subsidence will, I think, 

 be dead as a doornail and subside forever hereafter. 



The little island of Wailangilala, in the northeast of 

 the group, seemed admirably adapted for the purpose 

 of boring ; a low tiny island about five cables long, cov- 

 ered with shrub and cocoanut trees, that rose on the 

 northeastern rim of a reef of the same name nearly 

 nine miles around, enclosing a roughly elliptical lagoon. 

 The island had the added advantage of having a light- 

 house whose keeper was able to furnish shelter for the 

 boring crew. Here a party of three white men and four 

 natives was landed with the boring apparatus and pro- 



1 Refers to the boring made at Funafuti in the Ellice Islands, which 

 will be mentioned later. 



