Chap. xiii.J KANDAVU ISLAND. 26t 



The town or village at Ngaloa Bay, in Kandavu 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, 

 when 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 the 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 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 hammer- 

 ing his wife occasionally until the stone assumed the desired 

 form. Thus the man procured it with the least possible 

 expenditure of labour on his part. Similar grinding places, 

 with grooves cut in the rock, whither natives used to come to 

 grind their stone axes, are known in Australia. 



There are no roads in the island of Kandavu, merely narrow 

 tracks through the woods and along the shores, which are 

 excessively tiring to traverse. I made one shooting excursion 

 at Kandavu. The route lay first amongst beds of reeds on a 

 small expanse of flat land at the mouth of the valley in which 

 the stream runs; then skirting a mangrove swamp bordermg 

 the shallow interior lagoon part of the bay, led amongst "taro" 

 beds, and up a steep slope into the densely tangled woods. 



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. 



