186 COOK'S STRAITS. [PART i. 



capacious harbours than are to be met with on any 

 other coast of similar extent. The country around 

 the harbours consists principally of steep hills clothed 

 with forest from the water's edge to their summit. 

 The formation of these hills, a metamorphic slate 

 and basalt, or Lydian stone, does not form a very 

 favourable substratum to the thin layer of vegetable 

 earth which covers them. The natives, therefore, 

 choose for cultivation the very small extent of flat 

 land found in the little coves and bays which the 

 coast forms in innumerable places, and which are 

 less wooded ; or they choose still more frequently 

 the bottom of ravines, where they destroy the forest 

 by fire, leaving the unconsumed stems of the trees 

 to decay naturally. Here the fertile earth is in 

 greater abundance, and a never-failing crop of maize, 

 potatoes, taro, turnips, cabbage, sweet potatoes, or 

 pumpkins, recompenses their labour. In that part 

 of the island a European population must there- 

 fore be satisfied to pursue the same system as the 

 natives have done, namely, to disperse themselves in 

 small communities over those little bays, and rear 

 the necessaries of life, without other labour than 

 their own, and gradually to work their way up the 

 ravines, bringing them to such a state as to bear a 

 low herbage of grass and clover on which to feed 

 sheep and cattle. The island of Mana has been thus 

 converted into sheep pasture ; but I am certainly of 

 opinion that here sheep should be reared chiefly for 

 their carcase, as the country is not favourable to the 



