18 "ALBATROSS" TROPICAL PACIFIC EXPEDITION 



high elevated island of which Dana speaks as occurring in the western Pau- 

 motus.^ For though he mentions some others as possibly having been 

 elevated five or six feet, yet he considered them all, as well as Makatea 

 (Metia, or Aurora, of Dana), as modern elevated reefs. From the very de- 

 scription 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 coral- 

 liferous 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 it soon became evident that it presented all 

 the characteristics to which I had become so accustomed 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, Yangasa, 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. 



At Makatea we also first came upon well-defined terraces and lines of 

 caverns at the base of the cliffs indicating the line of present action of the 

 sea. The position of these terraces was usually more clearly seen along 

 the face of the cliffs at prominent points, where they were undercut much 

 as I have figured them for certain cliffs in Vatu Leile, Yangasa, Mango, 

 Fulanga,and others in Fiji, in my report on the islands and coral reefs of 

 that group.^ 



The evidence of elevation in the atolls of the western Paumotus is very 

 definite. Makatea is an elevated mass of coralliferous limestone similar in 

 all respects to masses like Vatu Vara, Thithia, and others in Fiji, having, 

 like some of the Fiji elevated islands, a sink of considerable depth occupj'- 

 ing a little more than one third the length of the island. So that it is not 

 unnatural to look upon the area of the Paumotus, as I am inclined to do, 

 as one of elevation, the raised and elevated land of which has been affected 

 much in the same way, by denudation and by erosion, as have the masses 

 of elevated coralliferous limestone of Fiji. Only there seems to have been, 

 from the evidence thus far presented, a far greater uniformity in the height 



1 Corals and Coral Islands, 3d ed., 1890, p. 193. 



2 Bull. M. C Z., Vol. XXXIII., 1899; Pis. 80, 84, 92, 100. 



