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This map, (Bryan, 1938) made by the T^tfiager Expedition in May 1923*. 
shows the northern two-thirds of the jlrifland to be dominated by a larxe 
crescentic fjiflge •with a maximum height of AO feet along th^ western 
beach and k-0 feel/ above the northeastern beach! A small crescentic ridge, 
with a maximum' height of 20/Teet, extends fCom east to wesls across the * 
southern enc/ of the 
along the southern 
.. A rocky lotgb, in three portions, is figure; 
of the east beach. 
The only vegetation on this map is a patch of grass, about S0u feet 
1 northwest e: 
jrtion of the island, 
ruins of 
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north of the Southern ridg^f and the wrecks of 
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by feet 
Japanese si 
n sampan pm a dingy noted above/4he southeast beach, and that of anotner 
sampan above the southwest beach. 
Wet more (unpub. —note s, 192*5) described the island in May 1925 as 
absolutely devoid of vegetation except for a narrow strip of grass and 
pigweed about two acres in area along the ridge at the northwest corner of 
the island. "It is roughly a parallelogram a nautical mile long by slightly 
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less than a ha lf mile wide. A low ridge on the northeast marks the highest 
point and there is a central depression hounded by a raised rim protecting 
it from the ocean that must in an earlier stage of development have been 
the basin of a lagoon similar to that at Laysan ". 
Captain Jobish Pell of the Holder Borden , which wrecked on Msianski in 
April 1844, described a swampy lagoon covered with grass in the interior of 
the island, into which the highest tides occasionally flowed (The Polynesian ) 
12 October 1844). This account provides the only known description of an 
actual lagoon on the island. There is no mention of a lagoon in the accounts 
of Isenheck (Kittlitz, 1854) or Palmer (Rothschild, 1895-1900). As the 
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