ON CHANGES OF LEVEL IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 129 



Atiu (Wateoo of Cook) is a raised coral island. Cook ob- 

 serves that it is " nearly like Mangaia." The land near the sea 

 is only a bank of coral ten or twelve feet high, and steep and 

 rugged. The surface of the island is covered with verdant hills 

 and plains, with no streams.* 



Manke is a low elevated coral island.f 



Mitiaro resembles Mauke.J 



Okatutaia is a low coral island, not more than six or seven 

 feet high above the beach, which is coral sand. It has a light- 

 reddish soil. 



Mangaia is girted by an elevated coral reef three hundred feet 

 in height. Mr. Williams speaks of it as coral, with a small quan- 

 tity of fine-grained basalt in the interior of the island j he stales 

 again that a broad ridge (the reef) girts the hills. § 



Rurutu has an elevated coral reef one hundred and fifty feet 

 in height. || 



With regard to the other islands of these groups, Manvai, 

 Aitutaki, Rarotonga, Rimetara, Tubuai, and Raivavai, the de- 

 scriptions by Williams and Ellis appear to show that they have 

 undergone no recent elevation. 



d. Scattered Islands in the latitudes between the Society and Sa- 

 moan Groups. — These coral islands, as far as we can ascertain, 

 are low like the Paumotus, excepting some of the Fanning Group 

 north of the equator, and possibly Jarvis and Maiden. 



Of the Fanning Group, (situated near the equator, south of 

 the Hawaiian Group,) 



Washington Island is three miles in diameter, without a proper 

 lagoon ; the whole surface, as seen by us, was covered densely 

 with cocoanut trees. This unusual size for an island without a 

 lagoon indicates an elevation, which the height of the island, 

 estimated at twelve feet, confirms. The elevation may have 

 been two or three feet. 



Palmyra Island, just northwest of Washington, is described 

 by Fanning as having two lagoons ; the westernmost contains 

 twenty fathoms water. Farming's Island, to the southeast of 

 Washington, is described by the same voyager as lower than that 

 island. The accounts give no evidence of elevation. 



* Cook's Voyage, vol. i, pp. 180, 197. Williams's Miss. Enterprises, i, 47, 48, first 

 Am. edit., Appleton. 



f Williams's Miss. Ent., pp. 39, 47, 264. % Ibid. pp. 39, 264. 



§ Williams's Miss. Ent., pp. 48, 50, 219. See also Mr. Darwin, p. 132. 



I Williams's Miss. Ent., p. 50. — Stutchbury describes the coral rock as one hundred 

 and fifty feet high. West of England Journal, i. — Tyerman aud Bennet describe the 

 island as having a high central peak with lower eminences, and speak of the coral 

 rock as two hundred feet high on one side of the bay and three hundred on the 

 other (ii, 102). — Ellis says that the rocks of the interior are in part basaltic, and in 

 part vesicular lava, hi, 393. 



17 



