SECTION E. 
GHOGRAPEHY, 
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
By Rev. Gro. Brown, D.D., or SYDNEY. 
THE PACIFIC, EAST AND WEST. 
‘ Ir is, I think, a very incomplete definition of geography 
which would confine it to a description of the configura- 
tion of the earth’s surface, and the divisions, natural or 
artificial, of the different countries. I purpose giving, 
as far as possible in the compass of this address, a short 
popular description of the respective groups which I have 
visited during the past 40 years, their commercial 
geography, more especially as regards the products of the 
groups, their capacity for settlement, and the possibilities 
of trade, and their ethnological geography, dealing with 
the respective races, their distribution and their relations 
to other tribes. 
There are, of course, many other branches of this great 
science, but those I have mentioned are more than 
sufficient for the present purpose, and can indeed only be 
dealt with very imperfectly. 
SaMOa. 
This, the most eastern group in the South Pacific. with 
which I have had a long acquaintance, les between the 
parallels of 13° 30' and 14° 30’ 8. Lat., and consists of 
the Manua Group, Tutuila Upolu, Manono, Apolima, and 
Savaii. 
The group is principally of volcanic formation, the most 
recent crater being one called Tutumau, a few miles inland 
of Safune, on the N.W. side of the large island of Savaii. 
I visited this 1862. No white man had ever ascended it 
before. It was at that time a high mountain of volcanic 
ashes, with a very deep, well-defined crater. The sides of 
the crater were almost perpendicular, and there was little 
or no vegetation on the mountain, but we saw no signs of 
heat or steam. 
