CHAPTER V 



DESCRIPTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL AND GENERAL PHYSICAL 

 FEATURES (continued] 



THE SEATURA MOUNTAIN. In my description of the profile of 

 this part of Vanua Levu, reference has already been made (p. 3) 

 to the great mass of this mountain which occupies five-sixths of 

 the breadth of the island. Viewed from seaward it looks like a 

 huge table-topped mountain-ridge, and as such it is represented in 

 the Admiralty charts ; but when its true contours are distinguished 

 it appears, when defined by the 3<DO-feet level in the map, as a 

 somewhat rounded mass, measuring 12 miles in length and 10 miles 

 in breadth and attaining a maximum height of 2,812 feet. Seen 

 from the deck of a passing ship it displays more or less regular 

 volcanic slopes, especially on the east, where there is a gradual 

 descent at an angle of 3 or 4 degrees for some 10 miles, and on 

 the north towards the Lekutu lowlands. It also shows a fairly 

 regular descent towards Mbua Bay on the west. (See profile, 



p. 62.) 



On the west side, however, there is a great gap in the mountain- 

 mass (the Ndriti Gap), marking, as I hold, an old crateral cavity of 

 large dimensions, and now occupied by the Ndama River and its 

 tributaries. 



The adjacent Seatovo Range to the southward obscures the 

 profile of the mountain on the south ; and it is in fact not at all 

 easy for this reason to get a view with all the slopes displayed, 

 It is only at times, when viewed in its complete mass with uninter- 

 rupted outlines, as from off the mouth of the Ndreketi River to the 

 north-east, or when the symmetry of its long eastern slope is 

 observed from Wainunu Bay that Seatura displays itself as a gentle- 

 sloped mountain-mass of the Mauna Loa type. Dense forest 



