Untitled

Waikato Argus, Volume V, Issue 332, 25 August 1898, Page 2

The officers of H.M.S. Porpoise, who arrived at Suva from Tonga on .Sunday, 24th ult., says the Fiji Times,, report, that Falcon Island, recently situated midway between Tongatabu and: Haapai groups and immediately opposite the Nomuka group of islets, some 27 mile 3 to the westward, has lately disappeared. Falcon Island was of volcanic origin,of half a-mile or more in diameter, and possessed an altitude of forty feet and was uninhabited. The breakers which were wont to thunder at its base, now revel in a broken kind of way over the site of the sunken island, and would indicate that the subsidence of the island is not of great depth. Its disappearance is doubtless owing to volcanic bances. In the neighbourhood of/™gasome dozen years since we chronicled the sudden appearance of an island in much the same fashion as we now do the disappearance of this one. As a geological,, or nail we not better siy volcanic, phenomena, the appearance or disappearance of an island in the tropical portion of the Pallia is well-known, although not an every day occurrence, H.M.S. Penguin was engaged surveying in the Tonga group when the Porpoise left and it is more than likely that thecommander of that vessel will visit the spot with the object of surveying the surrounding waters and making other notes of this interesting occurrence.