360 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



my ideas. This island has a sink as lagoon not more 

 than twelve feet deep with mullet and a few sea-shells, 

 but no corals, and is just such a lagoon as I wanted to 

 prove how the Paumotu Lagoons have been made; and 

 at a little island (to the northeast) called Tikei, I found 

 a still smaller sink — just what might be expected of so 

 small a place. We stopped at the entrance of Apataki, 

 quite a large lagoon, just like the other lagoons we have 

 seen. In fact it now looks to me as if I had a sample of 

 all the kinds of atolls to be got in this archipelago. For 

 the past three days, since we left Apataki it has been 

 blowing very hard, so that our passages have been very 

 uncomfortable, just like the trade winds in the Carib- 

 bean — in fact a little worse. But this kind of weather 

 (as usual) is not expected and the natives don't know 

 what to make of it. But it 's no consolation to us, for 

 with such a wind there is no exploring to be made by 

 water in the lagoon, and we are helpless until the weather 

 changes and the sea goes down. This lagoon is fully 

 twenty miles long and ten wide, not so large as Ran- 

 giroa, nor so populous." 



While stormbound he writes Mrs. Agassiz : — 



" This is one of the islands where Stevenson exiled 

 himself for a few months. The more I see and read of 

 what Stevenson did in the Pacific, the more inclined I 



am to look upon him as a . Certainly all he 



writes may be good English, but it has neither common 

 sense nor accurate observation ; perhaps he did not fancy 

 that any one would walk in his tracks so soon. What 

 there is here to attract one I cannot see, unless it be 

 a cure for nervous prostration — it 's sure to kill that 

 here ! When it comes to seeing such noble qualities in 



