GENERAL ACCOUNT HEDLEY. 19 



8. A peripheral growth at present level is indicated on both 

 sides of the islets. 



CLIMATE. 



During our visit in the "winter" of this latitude, the ther- 

 mometer never fell below 75 ; when it approached this minimum 

 the natives seemed to feel the cold, as their bare skins puckered 

 into "gooseflesh." A native who had visited Auckland, New 

 Zealand, amused me with a description of how in that, to him, 

 distant and frigid clime, he saw his breath appear one cold 

 morning " like smoke," and how he felt alarmed that he were 

 stricken by some dire malady. The highest temperature we 

 noticed was about 92, sometimes for days together the ther- 

 mometer would oscillate within a few degrees of 80, the latter 

 being the temperature of the surface of the lagoon. The readings 

 of the wet and dry bulb were seldom far apart in that humid 

 atmosphere. 



A week hardly ever passed without rain, and it sometimes 

 poured hard all day. 



The wind rarely shifted out of the east. Our hut upon the 

 lee side of the islet had its sides open to the weather, yet it 

 seldom blew enough there to extinguish a match. Only twice do 

 I recollect a gust from the westward strong enough to scatter 

 loose papers on the table. 



The zodiacal light was sometimes seen distinctly. 



Hurricanes seldom occur, but a few have impressed their 

 memory upon residents. I have already stated my belief that 

 the Mangrove Swamp is a scar upon the islet resulting from one 

 of these conflicts of the elements. " The group," says Becke, 

 " suffers but seldom from droughts or hurricanes, although the 

 terrible drought experienced in the near-to Gilbert Group in 

 1892, which has not yet broken up, has also affected the Ellices, 

 and at the present time Nanomea and Nanomaga present a 

 parched up appearance. A heavy blow in 1890 also did terrible 

 havoc among the cocoanuts, which had not the strength to bear 

 up against the drought."* Describing the Gilbert Islands, 

 Woodfordf remarks : " I suspect that it is not till the cyclone 

 in its course reaches a latitude of about 12 to 18 from the 

 equator, that the level of the water accompanying it attains a 

 height sufficient to do serious damage. Were it not so, the 

 Ellice Group, of similar formation, which lies much further to 

 the southward, would he rendered uninhabitable. A wave of 

 the height of eighteen feet would be sufficient to sweep away the 

 whole of the population of the Gilbert and Ellice Groups." 



* Becke loc. cit. f Woodford loc. cit. 



