THE FIJIS 331 



visions, while the Yaralla steamed away, to return and 

 pick up the men later. 



On going back to Wailangilala, after he had seen 

 something more of the elevated limestones so common 

 in the group, Agassiz found the drill had reached the 

 elevated limestone at a depth of about fifty feet, and 

 stopped the work about thirty feet lower. For, as he 

 says, " Of course it seemed foolish to go on boring here 

 when it is so simple to get at the face and slopes of 

 elevated reefs and study their composition in situ on a 

 large scale and not from a core, reefs of which the un- 

 derlying strata can be seen to be volcanic rocks as at 

 Kambara, Mango, Fulanga, Vanua Mbalavu, and Suva 

 Harbor and approaches." 



The boring convinced Agassiz that the island was a 

 fragment of one of larger size which once covered the 

 whole area of the lagoon. For the northern extremity 

 of the atoll was less subject to the destructive agency 

 of the waves created by the southeast trades ; so that 

 here there was left a wider reef flat, upon which Wai- 

 langilala and another diminutive island represented the 

 only dry land not worn away by the action of the sea. 



Agassiz's next trip took him to the islands of Ngau, 

 Nairai, and Ovalu, to the east of Suva, and included 

 the tiny island of Mbau, close to the shore of Viti Levu, 

 once the most important place of the Fijis, and crowded 

 with houses. This was the home of the last great chief 

 Thakombau, who ceded the islands to Great Britain. 



After again touching at Suva, Agassiz proceeded to- 

 ward Nandronga, whence he writes on December 8 : 

 " We got here this noon, our most westerly point, a 

 pretty little harbor on the north coast of Viti Levu. 

 The trip from the Mbenga passage has been most inter- 



