DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPEDITION. 157 
difficulty in finding the 100-fathom line, on account of the steepness of the slope, we 
attempted to dredge. Opposite the centre of Remire we found a hard sandy bottom 
at 180 fathoms, practically without life, but then further north we got into rough coral 
ground, in which we lost a dredge, breaking up a second, but securing some coral- 
rubble evidently swept out off the reef above. We then dredged round in shallow water 
to Eagle Island, to the north of which we anchored at mid-day, going ashore soon 
afterwards. 
Eagle is a round island, about half a mile in diameter, situated on a flat reef about 
200 yards wide, broken only in one place to the north. The land is entirely formed of 
sand-rock. The shore is sandy with layers of beach sandstone. In most parts it ends in 
a small sand-cliff above, but in some situations in a wall of tuffe-rock 8 to 12 feet high 
Fig. 45, 
Shore-cliffs of Eagle Island, Amirante Group, with sandy beach below. 
(fig. 45). The land behind this cliff is a few feet higher than that in the centre of the 
island, but is nowhere more than 16 feet above the level of the reef-flat. Undoubtedly 
the island was once much larger, but the whole question of the formation and history 
of all these islands is one which will have to be dealt with later. For the most part 
the surface presents a bare flat of rock much broken up by the guano-workings. There 
are as yet no high trees and the shrubs are as small and stunted as at Cargados. A few 
coconuts have been planted to the north in the last ten years, but it is only recently 
that the last of the guano has been removed and the island let for cultivation. A clump 
of screw-pines (Pandanus Balfouri) in the centre of the island was an unusual feature, 
this genus of plants, so common in the Maldives and the islands of the Pacific, 
apparently having been introduced into the coral-islands of the Western Indian Ocean, 
