16 EXPEDITION OF THE “ALBATROSS,” 1899-1900. 
out above the general level, and has a very narrow and shallow entrance, 
passable for boats only. Some of its islands are wooded and appear to 
have been formed by accretion of sand from the decomposing ledges of 
the lagoon. The outer land-rim appears as if formed by sand-banks driven 
in from the sea face and also driven out from the lagoon side by the action 
of the waves. It is evident that a lagoon such as Matahiva could readily 
be closed by such a process and the sea no longer have access to it, as it 
now has only one very narrow and very shallow boat-passage connecting the 
lagoon with the sea on the lee side. 
It was with great interest that we approached Makatea, as it is the 
only high elevated island of which Dana speaks as occurring in the west- 
ern Paumotus.' For though he mentions some others as possibly having 
been elevated five to six feet, yet he considered them all, as well as 
Makatea (Metia, or Aurora, of Dana) as modern elevated reefs. From the 
very description given by him of the character of the cliffs and of the 
surface of Makatea, I felt satisfied that it was composed of the same 
elevated coralliferous limestone so characteristic of the elevated reefs of 
Fiji, and which from the evidence of the fossils and the character of the 
rock, both Mr. Dall and myself have been led to regard as of Tertiary 
age. 
As we approached the island from the northwest it soon became evident 
that it presented all the characteristics to which I had become so accus- 
tomed in Fiji, and, upon landing, this was found to be the case. The 
cliffs had the same appearance as those of Vatu Leile, Ongea, Mango, 
Kambara, Yangas4, and many other elevated islands of Fiji. There were 
fewer fossils, perhaps, but otherwise the petrographic character of the 
rock was identical with that of Fiji. Mr. Mayer collected upon the top 
of the second terrace a number of fossils similar in all respects to those 
we found in the Fiji elevated coralliferous limestones. 
The southwestern extremity of the island slopes gradually to the sea 
and shows two well-defined terraces. The lines of these two terraces 
could, as a rule, be traced along the faces of the vertical cliffs by the 
presence of caverns along the lines of those levels, similar to the lines of 
1 Corals and Coral Islands, 3d ed., 1890, p. 193. 
