in the Pacific, 6fc. 85 



vegetation — the wild and gloomy ravines in the rear, lighted 

 up in spots by sparkUng waterfalls ; and in the remote back- 

 ground, the fantastic pinnacles of the grandly broken moun- 

 tains, towering up in clear relief against the soft blue tropical 

 sky — all these combine to form a picture of such transcendant 

 loveliness as can be scarcely equalled in any other part of the 

 world. 



The second class of ravines is often not to be distinguished 

 from the first, where it opens on the coast, but at some dis- 

 tance inland it contracts to a very narrow gorge, of varying 

 extent, which again opens suddenly into a sort of circus, oc- 

 casionally eight or ten miles in compass, but usually from an 

 eighth to three-fourths of a mile in diameter, surrounded, 

 except at the outlet, by a lofty and precipitous escarpment, so 

 as to present exactly the aspect of a crater whose walls have 

 been riven asunder by some violent convulsion. This structure 

 of the ravines is of more common occurrence in the Samoan 

 and Hawaiian Islands, than at Tahiti. They are sometimes 

 dry at bottom, but more frequently form the basins of streams, 

 which, flowing through a tract of table land above, throw 

 themselves over a precipice of from one to five hundred feet 

 in height, and pass out through the narrow gorge to the sea. 

 At Upolu there is a fine instance of this, in the cataract of 

 Yainafa, or '• the broken water." The river, about seventy 

 feet wide, and four deep just above the pitch, falls in three 

 sheets about two hundred feet, into an oval basin, about three- 

 fourths of a mile in circuit, from which it escapes between 

 two high cliffs, not above twenty yards asunder. 



In the following cut it is attempted by different lines, to 

 exh.bit at one view four distinct sections of this class of 

 ravine, to show the character of its terminating circus. 



a. Natural section presented at tlie falls. 



h. h. Imaginary transverse section at forty yards below them. The dotted 

 curvo line crossing h near the bottom, represents a large excavation, worn by 

 the s jray at the foot of the falls. 



c. r. Similar section at widest part of circus, about one hundred and fifty 

 yard.' below the falls. 



d. d. d. d. Do. at the gorge where the river enters it from the basin. 



