Starting from Suva we steam a little west of north, along the chain of the Ellice and Gilbert Islands, which reaches quite up to the equator. These islands are all coral atolls; Funafuti, in the Ellice Group, serves as a type of all the rest. It consists 49 of a lagoon, about twelve miles across, roughly circular and surrounded by a reef; the top of this reef appears here and there above water in the form of coral islets, the largest of which is Funafuti proper. The whole atoll is merely the coral-rimmed summit of a huge mountain rising from the great depths of the Pacific. Funafuti is a complicated atoll; many of the smaller islands of the Fijian group are volcanic, and show a different kind of structure. In these we sometimes find the old crater filled with water, while the remnants of the slopes of the volcano form the shores of the lagoon. A good instance of this structure is Totoya, towards the south-east of the Fijian group. 50 Here the enclosing rim rises to over a thousand feet, but the sea has broken through on the south and formed a lagoon. The entrance is almost closed by the coral reef which encircles the whole of the outside of the island. Coral reefs grow everywhere if the water is shallow enough, so that we find reefs not only around the coasts of the islands but growing on banks which are isolated and entirely covered by the sea. [Illustration: TOTOYA. The dotted portions represent coral reefs.] North of the Ellice Islands are the Gilberts, arranged also in rows from south-east to north-west. They, too, are coral atolls, with a thin soil which will grow nothing but coconuts and screw pines; none the less, on coconuts and fish a fairly dense population supports itself. They are, as we might expect, less civilised here than in the larger islands which we have visited further south. From the Gilberts we turn south-west to visit another great row of islands, the Solomons and New Hebrides. On our way we pass Ocean Island, a small dot isolated from the rest of the Gilbert Group. Here we find, in addition to the natives, a considerable number of Europeans. The island is being exploited commercially, but instead of making copra they are digging out valuable deposits of phosphates. Here are some of the natives, and here is 51 a picture showing the excavation of the phosphatic coral rock. 52 Ocean Island has for us a further interest. North-west of it lies Nauru, where also phosphates are obtained. Nauru belongs to Germany, and the dividing line between the British and German spheres runs between the two islands. If we follow the line south-west, we see that it cuts through the Solomons and then turns sharply west to New Guinea which it divides roughly into halves. Germany shares with the United States the Samoa Islands, north-east of Tonga, but her main sphere of influence is in this western area.