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The Phosphate Deposits of Nauru.
Our smallest (German) Protectorate, the Marshall Islands has an area of only 400 square kilometres, divided into a large number of atolls which, with a few exceptions, are lagoon islands and contain a native population of about 15,000 souls.
To this Protectorate belongs the Island of Nauru, situated 0.26 South latitude and 166.56 East longitude. Whilst the atolls have an elevation of scarcely 15 feet above high water level, Nauru rises to about 75 metres. From an immense depth of sea, the almost circular island slants up at an angle of 45 degrees, and forms a smooth sloping expanse of about 2,000 hectares.
Round the island runs a reef of 60 to 90 metres in breadth; then follows a belt about 100 metres wide of flat country on which the cocoanut palm grows in luxuriant abundance, and behind this is a stony tract of land, in the S.W. part of which is a small lagoon a few feet deep.
Under German administration, and with a wholesome prohibition against the importation of schnapps and weapons, the inhabitants of Nauru have by degrees become docile, peaceable folk, and the stony tract which rises up behind the cocoanut belt has proved to be an accumulation of high grade phosphate.
The turning of this fertiliser to account was handed over as the privilege of the Jaluit Gesellschaft, Jaluit Marshall Islands and Hamburg, which, as is known, had to reimburse the Government and the cost of administration of the Protectorate itself, it left the Company its privilege in continuance - an export duty (or Royalty) being, however, imposed.
Closer investigation by experts showed that the phosphate has doubtless been originally deposited by birds which had used the then uninhabited island as a breeding place - as we may observe today, certainly on a smaller scale, on other of the South Sea Islands.
In bygone times - centuries ago probably - when thus resorted to Nauru seems to have been a coral island. From volcanic action the island experienced upheavals and depressions, two of which are traceable and three are inferred. Presumably, however, a far larger number will have occurred before Nauru assumed its present form. The soluble phosphate contained in the guano trickled with the rain on to the coral beneath, and, getting mixed with the requisite lime, formed phosphate rock; in the course of centuries surf and rain washed away the less hard coral formation, while the phosphoric acid lime collected in the hollows and clefts between the water-worn stones, in the shape of polished pebbles and sand.
In this condition the island appears to have repeatedly emerged, and to have been visited by birds as before. Again the phosphate trickled from these later deposits, and cemented together the phosphate formation of an earlier period stored up in the clefts, into a conglomerate as we find it in great masses today.
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