208 



well), I was unable to get so much information on the spot as 

 [ should have liked.* 



However, I learned that the sandalwood has been long 

 known to the natives (its value, too, I surmise), and was at one 

 time widely spread over the district. 



Many of the trees have been destroyed by fire and Fijian 

 cultivation, and it is now confined to two or three places, which 

 I i stimate cover about a square mile each. 



Leaving na Suacoka we went up a valley to the left to a 

 Fijian town called na Wasakubu. From this we ascended the 

 hills to the right, and near the top entered the ravine where 

 the sandalwood is growing, through the site of an abandoned 

 township and immense boulders of limestone. 



Down this ravine we proceeded for half an hour and arrived 

 at the first sandalwood trees. We found one of them dead ; it 

 had been carried down by a landslip. I got it cut up and sent 

 to na Tua-tua-coka, to be transported to Levuka.* 



At this place the ravine is narrow and bounded by lands 

 which had once been cultivated, but are now overgrown with 



ds. A little further down the ravine gets wider, and 

 branches out to the right and left. In a walk of about half a 

 mile, some 50 or 60 trees, young and old, were counted. 

 These were growing close to the path, and the heads of others 

 were observed among other kinds of trees at a little distance 

 off. Beyond the branch of the ravine on the left there are 

 patches of forest on the sides of the mountain (Koroba), in all 

 of which sandalwood is growing. 



The trees among which the sandalwood is principally found 

 are daku ; dakua-salu-salu ; Lewninini ; vuga(meterosideros poly- 

 morpha) ; alstonia or the Fijian caoutchouc tree; damanu; acacia 

 richii, gumu. The condition of the sandalwood trees is de- 

 plorable. Many of them are barked and notched ; all of them 

 are broken down by climbers, and choked by useless scrub, 

 &C., and I suspect that numbers have been cut and carried 

 away. The soil on which the treesare growing is decompos- 

 ing limestone and disintegrating agglomerate. 



For their preservation, I would suggest that a trustworthy 

 man be seni to survey the district in which the sandalwood is 

 growing; that the trees, young and old, be counted, and the 



*tb and girth of each taken; that the scrub around them 

 be cut and chared away, and the climbers taken off; that all 

 the dead trees be a< once utilized, and the roots also dug up 



A lar;."- port dow in the Botanical Museum iu the Royal Gardens 



.v Kew. 



