302 A NATURALIST ON THE " CHALLENGER." 



small ones.* Viti Levu, the largest island, is 94 statute miles 

 long by 55 broad. 



The town or village at Ngaloa Bay, in Kandavn Island, was, 

 at the time of our visit, miserably small, consisting of a few 

 native huts, with three or four small stores kept by Europeans, 

 and a whisky shop. 



The main bulk of the island of Kandavu, as of that of 

 Ovalau, is made up of a coarse conglomerate, composed of 

 rounded fragments of volcanic rock. The surface of the islands 

 is worn by denudation in such a manner as to present, as 

 viewed from a distance, the appearance of a series of obtuse- 

 angled triangles, rising one above the other. These are more 

 numerous and less distinctly defined towards sea-level, whilst 

 above, their apices form a line of peaked mountain-summits. 

 The lower triangles are the foreshortened secondary ridges, 

 formed on the mountain slopes by denudation. They struck 

 me as having a more than ordinary uniformity of slope and 

 general features in the Fiji Islands. 



The whole of these slopes and ridges in Kandavu and 

 Ovalau are covered with a dense dark green forest growth, except 

 where, in some places, patches of land, often of large extent, and 

 always very conspicuous, have been cleared for cultivation.. 

 The village at Ngaloa Bay is built at the mouth of a small 

 rocky mountain stream which affords a pleasant bath. The 

 Fijians still make use of a bow and arrow to shoot small fish in 

 the stream, using arrows with several jagged prongs. On the 

 banks of the stream, the surface of the live rock is in several 

 places covered with deeply scored grooves, having been used 

 formerly by the natives for grinding and shaping their stone 

 adzes. I fancy most of the grinding work was done by the 

 women, and when I see a finely polished Celt, I always picture 

 to myself the male savage getting a stick and hammering his 

 wife occasionally until the stone assumed the desired form. 



* The whole Fiji Group, exclusive of Coral islets, includes an area of 

 about 5,500 square miles of dry land, while at the period when the coral 

 commenced to grow, there were at least, as the facts show, 15,000 square 

 miles of land, or nearly three times the present surface. J. D. Dana, 

 " Coral Reefs and Islands/' p. 94. N. York, Putman, 1853. 



