178 "ALBATEOSS" TROPICAL PACIFIC EXPEDITION. 



very recently (PI. 214). Falcon Island,^ thrown up in 1885, disappeared 

 in 1898, and Late is still active. This line of volcanoes runs at a distance 

 of from fifteen to twenty miles parallel with the trend of the four irregu- 

 larly shaped plateaus upon which rise the Tonga Islands. They are the 

 summits of a great ridge, over 200 miles in length, sloping very gradually 

 to the westward into deep water, and being somewhat steeper on the east- 

 ern faces of the smaller platforms from which rise the volcanic peaks of 

 the group. 



Falcon Island has had a very varied existence. It was thrown up in 

 1885 to a height of about twenty feet, and in July, 1898, was destroyed by 

 a submarine explosion. It was first surveyed in 1889, and again in August, 

 1895 ; when the island was last surveyed it was about 800 by 700 yards, 

 nearly circular, the highest part of the island being forty feet above high- 

 water mark; its site is now marked by a shoal of nearly 100 yards in 

 extent, over which the sea is breaking with great violence.^ To the south 

 of Falcon Island are Honga Hapai and Honga Tonga ; Lister considers them 

 to be the fragments of an old crater. To the north of Falcon rises the 

 island of Tofua to a height of nearly 1900 feet; it is an active volcano, 

 about fifteen miles to the west of the Haapai group. It has a crater 

 which is about 140 feet above the sea level, filled with water. Numerous 

 small craters form a close rim around this lake. We could easily imagine 

 this volcano as well as Niuafdu^ to be denuded to the level of the sea, 

 leaving nothing but a narrow volcanic rim on which corals would grow 

 and form a circular atoll with a comparatively deep lagoon. Kao, the 

 volcano to the north of Tofiia, is over 3000 feet in height and a much 

 sharper peak. Half-way to Late, Metis shoal rises to the surface. The 

 next peak to the north. Late, is an active volcano, rising to a height of 

 over 1700 feet. The crater is deeply indented with fissures running down 

 on the eastern side. Near the east coast there is a second inactive crater ; 

 its inner sides rise perpendicularly from a small fiat ledge surrounding a 

 lake. Still farther to the north, about twenty-five miles from the northern 



1 An excellent account of Falcon Island, by Lister, will be found in the Proceedings of the Royal 

 Geographical Society of London, for March, 1890, p. 157. Lister visited the island in October, 1889 ; 

 he states that the height of the island was then 153-^ feet ; he gives three excellent views of the island. 



2 A. Chart 1385, . 3 Ibid., 1176. 



