338 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 



two latter are not inhabitable, nor is it possible to land on them. 

 Curtis Island discharges great quantities of steam, which spouts 

 out of the crevices of the rocks. Sunday Island, Avhich has 

 been inhabited at various times by people of European extrac- 

 tion, is 12 miles in circumference, and about 1600 feet in 

 height, and has very rich soil. The ground is so warm in some 

 places that food may be baked in it, as in an oven. 



Very large turtle come up at this place, both the green kind 

 and hawk's-bill, which is the more valuable. There is almost 

 a mystery about this species of turtle, as it is never found 

 westward or, in Pacific parlance, to leeward of the one 

 hundred and eightieth meridian of longitude ; so it is called by 

 the natives honu no te opunga, the ' turtle of the going down of 

 the sun.' 



In places where the hawk's-bill turtle are plentiful it is the 

 ustom of the natives to strip them of their valuable plates by 

 introducing a hot knife under the laminae, and then letting the 

 creature return to the sea. 



Wallis Island, to the west of the Samoan Group, enjoys as 

 fertile a soil as those just described. It has a large population 

 of devoted Catholics, under the superintendence of the Bishop 

 of Oceania, who is assisted by numerous clergy and a sisterhood 

 of nuns. A handsome cathedral of cut-stone has been substi- 

 tuted in Wallis Island for the cannibal temple, and notwith- 

 standing the complete absence of Nihilism, Socialism, and other 

 ' advanced' theories, the contented natives manage to do a very 

 good business in copra. 



The Fanning's Group consists of four islands in the North 

 Pacific, discovered by Captain Edmund Fanning, an American 

 navigator. They stretch from 1 47' N. to 5 49' N., and from 

 longitude 157 27' W. to 162 11' W. 



The most westward, and evidently the last formed of the 



