ATOLLS 215 



It is always an exciting moment for the sailor when he makes 

 his first contact with people he has not visited before. The boat 

 brought Chief Clerk Kofe, the Assistant Medical Practitioner and 

 the island's only policeman. There were no Europeans in the 

 Ellice Islands at this time and the Gilbertese District Officer was 

 far away on the other side of the world studying at Oxford. But 

 the local Native Magistrate, assisted by Kofe, was doing a fine 

 job of quiet, efficient administration. The Chief Clerk was now 

 making his official call in true Colonial tradition, neatly attired 

 in his white duck suit. 



Whilst Kofe and the A.M. P. took tea with the Captain and 

 spoke of the activities in their little-visited territory, the police- 

 man on deck was subjected to many interested questions, for all 

 three men spoke English. The Supply Officer was interested to 

 know whether there was much crime in such an isolated com- 

 munity of 35^0 souls, and asked the policeman if there were any 

 prisoners in gaol. 'Yes, we have one man in prison,' he replied. 

 'What for?' asked the Paymaster, to which the policeman replied 

 in one word, common enough in a sailor's vocabulary but not 

 looked upon as a crime in itself in the western world. 



This was by no means the first visit to Funafuti of a ship carry- 

 ing enquiring scientists, for between 1896 and 1900 a series of 

 expeditions had reached this atoll under the auspices of the Royal 

 Society's Coral Reef Committee; at first they had come in the 

 naval surveying ship Penguin and later in a number of other craft 

 to make deep borings below the islands around the lagoon. 

 Darwin's theory of atoll construction was being challenged at this 

 time. He believed that the atolls had begun their life as fringing 

 reefs about the coast of high islands, which having been raised up 

 by volcanic action from the deep ocean floor had for millions of 

 years been sinking slowly back into the earth's crust. As the 

 highest peaks had at last sunk beneath sea level there remained 

 a void at the centre of the reef where food for the polyp was 

 scarce and which became a lagoon floored with coral debris. 

 Murray, who had been on the earlier Challenger expedition, sug- 

 gested that the atolls were formed by coral growing upon clay- 

 like sediments covering submerged seamounts, which lay at a 

 depth less than 200 feet below the sea surface, enabling the 



