Loading JNI libraries on the Mac

I've been trying to build a simple JNI library from C code on the Mac (Snow Leopard). Compiling it seems pretty straightforward, but the Java library loader isn't happy. I can call
= System.load("/tmp/jnitest.jnilib");=
which works fine, or
= System.loadLibrary("jnitest") // or System.loadLibrary("jnitest.jnilib")=
with java.library.path set to "/tmp", which doesn't work.

I've given up trying to understand it for now. I spent way too long googling on the Intertubes for information, which points to problems with Java 1.6 on Snow Leopard, but I didn't find anything that was even consistent with this behavior. On the other hand, I can at least make progress for the moment, since the JNI calls work.