352 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



bottom ! Since I wrote we have been sounding in pretty 

 deep water, nothing less than 2400 fathoms, and one 

 sounding 3088 fathoms. Our bad luck with the sound- 

 ing apparatus is continuing, and we are not having a 

 single cast such as it should be in all respects — this is 

 bad, and every day gets us further from the true oceanic 

 conditions and little by little we are sure to feel the in- 

 fluence of the plateau on which the Marquesas stand. 

 Still we have left a few days in which to make up — if 

 we lose them we shall have miscarried one very interest- 

 ing part of our work, all the deep sea oceanic (basin) far 

 from continents which might influence the bottom. We 

 are now just about twelve to fifteen hundred miles from 

 any land ! ideal conditions for what I wanted to do, but 

 thanks to the shiftlessness [of the Pish Commission] in 

 not testing their apparatus, it looks as if this my last 

 long expedition was going to be as much of a fizzle as 

 my Australian trip ! Not a pleasant prospect, but of 

 course the coral part still remains and the line from 

 Tahiti to Tonga, which is a good line but not an oceanic 

 line like the one San Francisco to Marquesas. . . ." 



Albatross — Marquesas, September lo, TaiohaeBay. 

 " Since I have written we have done quite a lot of work 

 and have made some interesting soundings developing 

 the plateau upon which the Marquesas unite at about 

 eight to nine hundred fathoms. One or two of our deep 

 hauls brought up some fine things, but outside the Great 

 Equatorial current there seems to be but little on the 

 bottom. The deep tow-net hauls have been interesting, 

 and we are gradually bringing up a lot of deep-sea 

 types of fishes and of Crustacea which live within a very 

 moderate depth from the surface. A great deal of the 

 value of our soundings is lost from the fact that there 



