Geography
Located at 1,365 km (848 mi) north-north-east of Rarotonga, 9 degrees south of the equator. It sits atop the highest submarine volcano in the Cooks, 4876 m (15,917 ft) above the ocean floor. It comprises a ring of coral 77 km (48 mi) around. The lagoon covers 233 square kilometres (90 mile²) of which 62 square kilometres (24 mile²) is covered with pearlshell. Land area is 9.84 square kilometres (2,432 acres). Maximum elevation less than 5 m. Population according to the 2001 census was 357. As of 2006 the population of the island has shrunk to only 200 or so inhabitants according to the current mayor of the island.
Read more about this topic: Penrhyn (atoll)
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)