THE FIJIS 333 



English friends who are howling for joy at the results 

 of the boring in Funafuti will be greatly surprised when 

 they hear from me. I shall send in a week to see how my 

 man is getting along. I left him on a small atoll in the 

 northwest part of the [Lau] group called Wailangilala ; 

 as long as he is there I will let him bore for another 

 month, but his results will in no way affect the question. 

 When I came here I took it for granted that Dana's and 

 Darwin's premises about the coral regions of the Cen- 

 tral Pacific were correct and that this group of islands 

 (Fijis) was in an area of subsidence. You may judge of 

 my surprise when I found that the Fijian is an area of 

 elevation, and in one day I 've seen more of the thick- 

 ness of elevated reef than I could have in a couple of 

 years of steady work. I cannot understand how Dana 

 ever made such a mistake, for he was in the group quite 

 a while, but Darwin's observations were all theoretical 

 and based upon chartographic study in his house, a very 

 poor way of doing, and that 's the way all his coral reef 

 work has been done. He never was more than ten days 

 in a region of reefs and thought out everything he lias 

 written. I never could see how his theory has got such 

 a hold with so little holding ground. I shall now finish 

 my time by making excursions of a few days from Suva as 

 a centre and be within hail of port in case of a hurricane. 



On Board Yaralla, 

 Suva, Deo. 17, 1897. 



" I was reminded this a.m. that I had turned the corner 

 of 62 ! — by Max and Woodworth, who are arrang-ino- a 

 dress dinner in the cabin for celebrating the day ! Since 

 I wrote you we have done a lot of odds and ends from 

 Suva as a base, and have done quite a lot of deep 



