278 A MISSION TO VITI. 



therefore more readily recommend itself to the white 

 settler, as it requires hardly any clearing, and would be 

 immediately available for cattle-breeding and cotton- 

 growing. 



The coast-line of most of the islands is enriched by 

 a dense, more or less broken, belt of cocoa-nut palms. 

 White beaches, formed of decomposed corals, may be 

 traced for miles ; whilst good soil in many instances ex- 

 tends quite to the water's edge, and trees, not numbering 

 amongst the strictly littoral vegetation, overhang the 

 sea. Mangrove swamps are limited, and chiefly confined 

 to the mouths of the rivers; hence the almost total 

 freedom of the country from malignant fevers. In the 

 windward islands, Lakeba and its dependencies, the 

 w r eeping iron-wood (Casuarina equisetifolia, Forst.), in- 

 termingled with screw-pines (Pandanus odoratissimus, 

 Linn.), abounds, and considerable tracts of country are 

 covered with the common brake and other hard-leaved 

 ferns: they prefer an open country, and have taken 

 possession where little else will grow. Wherever these 

 forms of vegetation occur on the weather side of the 

 group, the soil may be expected to be rather poor. It 

 would, however, be erroneous to apply the same rule to 

 the leeward side, where they are also tolerably abun- 

 dant, not because the soil is too poor to support a dense 

 herbaceous or woody vegetation, but because the air is 

 destitute of that excessive moisture, and the country 

 less visited by numerous showers of rain, promoting the 

 luxuriant growth on the weather side. 



The general physiognomy of the flora is decidedly 

 tropical ; tree-ferns, branching grasses, six or seven dif- 



