522 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the oldest detailed accounts of the islands and their inhabitants is that 

 given by Wilkes in the third volume of his narrative of the expediton. 

 Counting isolated rocks, the archipelago is composed of about 270 

 islands having a total area of 7,400 square miles, or nearly the same as 

 that of Massachusetts. Two of the islands are far larger than the 

 others, Vanua Levu (the great land) being about 100 miles long and 25 





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miles wide, and Viti Levu (Great Viti) being 80 miles long and 55 

 wide. Kandavu and Taviuni have not one twentieth the land area of 

 the two larger islands, and all the others are much smaller, so small 

 indeed that only about 80 islands of the group are large enough to be 

 inhabited. 



Geologically speaking, the Fijis are old and the volcanoes which 

 gave rise to them have long ago subsided into their final rest. Yet even 

 to-day there are reminders of more active times in an occasional earth- 

 quake, or the hot springs of Ngau or of Savu Savu valley and other 

 places on Vanua Levu, or the pumice, which at times rises to the sur- 

 face of the sea and is cast ashore at Kandavu. The islands were once 

 much larger and higher than they are to-day, for tropical rains have 

 washed the soft lavfeis into the surrounding sea, leaving here and there 

 pinnacles of hard basalt towering upward in fantastic castellated forms 

 and imparting a romantic beauty to the view which is surpassed only 



