A HISTORY OF FIJI ' 523 



in the Society and Marquesas Islands. Tlic little island of Kobu near 

 Xairai is a mass of volcanic rock, 90 feet in height, and is so strongly 

 magnetic that a compass placed upon its summit is deflected 85°. 



In the Fijis the erosion has gone so far that most of the old volcanic 

 rims have disappeared. Totoya and Thombia are, however, beautiful 

 cup-like craters, their centers now being harbors encircled by crescent- 

 shaped ridges, and there are a few fairly M-ell-defined craters among 

 the mountains of the larger islands. Indeed, at Kambara a small vol- 

 cano has in recent, but still prehistoric, times broken through the ele- 

 vated coral reef, but no native myths speak of volcanic eruptions. 



The Fijis are much older than the large islands of the Hawaiian 

 group or than some of the Samoan and Tongan islands, the volcanoes 

 of which are still active. Indeed, in the interior of Viti Levu plutonic 

 rocks and slates are found attesting to the considerable age of this 

 island, allying it to such land masses as New Zealand or Xew Caledonia, 

 which are partly volcanic and partly continental in character. Thus 

 the Fijis differ from the simple volcanic tumuli which constitute the 

 Hawaiian, Samoan, Society and Marquesas islands. In Hawaii and 

 Tahiti we find great central volcanic peaks, from the summits of which 

 deep valleys radiate outward to the sea, but in Fiji the large islands 

 have been formed by fusions between many adjacent volcanic cones, and 

 in later times the erosion has gone so far and local elevations and de- 

 pressions have been so frequent that the landscape is broken and wholly 

 irregular. 



Indeed, the islands have not been passive during all the ages in 

 which the rains have worn them down, for there have been depressions^ 

 and also great upheavals here and there, as at Yanua Mbalavu, where 

 the old coral reef is now a bold precipice of overhanging castellated 

 craffs towerino^ far above the waves that dash at its feet. This old coral 

 rock is cavernated and, at least one place along the shore, at Black 

 Swan Point, on Yanua Mbla^ii Island, one may enter through a small 

 cleft in the precipice and find oneself in a spacious chamber several hun- 

 dred feet in height, with veil-like sheets of stalactites sparkling in the 

 dim light that wanders inward through some hidden rift far up in the 

 vaulted roof. A deep pool of wonderfully clear ocean water lies within 

 this shadowy retreat, and brilliant blue and green fish flit butterfly-like 

 through their natural aquarium, the floor of which is carpeted by grace- 

 ful sea- whips, and slowly creeping crinoids with long ^feathery arms. 



Many other islands also exhibit elevated coral reefs, which in some^ 

 cases, as at Vatu Vara, have been lifted nearly 1,000 feet above the sea, 

 'and, near Suva, the hillside is full of fossil sea-shells and corals. We 

 can see that the islands were once much larger than they are to-day, 

 for nearly every one is encircled by a coral reef several miles out to sea,, 

 which marks the contour of the old coast line. Indeed, at Astrolabe- 



