A. Agassis — Expedition to the Maldives. 299 



the heavy sea we were unable either on our way south or north 

 to stop at Fua Mulaku, an island between Suvadiva and Addu, 

 but judging from the chart and such accounts as I could 

 obtain, it probably does not differ from similar islands in the 

 Maldives. 



On our way north we modified our course so as to visit the 

 faces of the atolls we had not seen on our way south, and to 

 cross the lagoons from a different direction, taking thus a bird's 

 eye view of the atolls and islands. Our route was further daily 

 modified according to the position of the sun, to enable us to 

 navigate the interior of an atoll in safety, or to take photo- 

 graphs as we passed, without loss of time. We also examined 

 the atolls of the eastern chain which we had not seen : Wattaru, 

 Felidu and South Male. From Male Island we examined the 

 western parts of North Male, which we had not visited before, 

 passed on to G-afaru, to Kardiva, to Fadiffoln, to South Malos- 

 madulu, to Gadu, to middle Malosmadnlu and North Malosma- 

 duln, to Miladummadulu, crossing to Makunudu and Tiladum- 

 mati. We left the Maldives through one of the passages on 

 the east face of Ihavandiffulu, the northernmost atoll of the 

 group, after having steamed nearly sixteen hundred miles among 

 the atolls of the Maldives. 



Although the waters within the groups of atolls on the Mal- 

 dives have been most carefully sounded by Captain Moresby 

 and Lieut. Powell, yet very little is known of the depths in the 

 channels separating them, or of the depths on the two sea faces 

 of the great plateau upon which the atolls of the Maldives have 

 developed.* The soundings give an excellent idea of the 

 topography of the bottom of the lagoons of the composite 

 atolls ; their greatest depths is not much more than 40 fathoms. 

 The depths indicate considerable variation over the bottom, and 

 in some regions these changes in depth are very abrupt, from 

 8 to over 20 fathoms in short distances. The character of the 

 bottom varies greatly according to the locality and its vicinity 

 to gaps, to passes, to islands or islets or sand bars. In many 

 cases the bottom is hard, swept clean by the currents, or cov- 

 ered with fragments coated with Nullipores, or it is covered 

 with corallines or made up of fragments of broken corals, or of 

 coarse or fine coral sand. On one occasion the claspers brought 

 up a piece of Millepore cut off from a living cluster from a 

 depth of 39 fathoms. This is an unusual depth for a reef 

 builder, as in the Maldives the reef corals rarely extend below 

 IT fathoms ; 12 fathoms is the usual depth I have observed. 



* Mr. J. Stanley Gardiner took a number of soundings across these chan- 

 nels, but he has not yet given the position of his casts. See the Fauna and 

 Geography of the Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagoes, vol. i, part i, p. 19, 

 and Introduction to the above, pp. 10, 11. (Noticed in this number.) 



