358 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



We towed a dingey behind and took a native pilot with 

 us, the same who piloted us in, and who landed us on the 

 other side in the neatest little boat harbor imaginable. On 

 our way we passed an interesting little island composed 

 of elevated limestone (as it should be if my ideas are cor- 

 rect), and when about two miles off, the bare reef about 

 twelve to fourteen feet high, which connects the island 

 and islets, began to loom up and was soon in full view. 

 As soon as we landed we began to take photographs. 

 I rushed across the islet to examine the limestone ridge 

 which flanks the islets on the sea face, and which Dana 

 saw from shipboard and described as elevated recent 

 reef ! I was tickled to death when I got there to find 

 myself on familiar ground. I could imagine myself at 

 one of the elevated Fiji atolls like Ngele Levu, where 

 the land is, however, seventy-five feet high and only 

 fourteen in this place ; but it is the same pitted, honey- 

 combed, eroded rock with which I had become familiar 

 in Fiji, and full of the same magnificent coral rock 

 fossils which it would take an age to collect by blast- 

 ing out, but I managed to chip off a few characteris- 

 tic fragments. I think I have the key of the Paumotu 

 coral reef problem, and it 's only an expansion of 

 what I have seen in Fiji; only this group is compara- 

 tively plain sailing and clear work, for Dana did not 

 examine his islands very closely ; as, for instance, the 

 greatest detail he gives of an island of the Paumotu 

 group is from what he saw sailing by ! As for Darwin, he 

 only sailed through and never stopped at all, so that I 

 am quite sure that unless something new and unfore- 

 seen turns up, I can chuck this group of atolls at the 

 heads of the Darwin-Dana party and ask them for the 

 next!" 



