LEADING PHYSICAL FEATURES 3 



A study of the profile of the island is an important preliminary 

 step to its more detailed examination. One may ramble over a 

 particular region of it for weeks, as I have done, without getting 

 any satisfactory idea of the true configuration of the surface. In a 

 locality densely wooded and occupied by steep mountain ridges 

 and deep gorges, the field of view is often very limited ; but seen 

 from the deck of a passing ship the main features of the island 

 assume their true proportions and relations, and much that was 

 uncertain is in this manner made plain. The profile here given 

 has been constructed from a number of others, and represents in a 

 graphic fashion Vanua Levu as viewed from the southward. I 

 have here sacrificed smaller details and occasionally some degree 

 of accuracy in small matters in order to bring out the principal 

 features of the island. 



At and near the extreme western extremity rise the conspicuous 

 hills of Sesaleka (1,370 feet), Naivaka (1,651 feet) and Koroma 

 1,384 feet), all of them formed of basic volcanic materials. 1 Naivaka, 

 which is connected with the main island by a narrow isthmus, only 

 about 30 feet in height, is probably one of the most recent addi- 

 tions to the island's area ; and it is at the same time one of the 

 most recent of the numerous volcanic vents that once existed. 

 The leading feature, however, of this end of Vanua Levu is the 

 great mountain of Seatura (2,812 feet), which occupies a large part 

 of the Mbua province and monopolises most of the landscape 

 whilst largely determining the form of the western extremity of 

 the island. It is a basaltic mountain of the Mauna Loa type, its 

 long eastern slope descending gently at an angle of three or four 

 degrees for about ten miles to the mouth of the Wainunu River. 

 In its deeply eroded radial valleys and gorges, and in other 

 respects, it is not unlike the island of Tahiti, as described by Dana. 



The Ndrandramea region to the eastward, which I have named 

 after one of its best known peaks, has a profile of a very different 

 character. Its broken outline indicates the existence of numer- 

 ous mountains and hills of acid andesites, occasionally dacitic. 

 Although some of them attain a height of 2,000 feet and over 

 their tops alone are seen from seaward. Between the foot of these 

 mountains and the south coast extends a great plateau of columnar 

 basalt, incrusted at its borders with submarine deposits, which 

 descends coastward with a very gentle slope, the fall in about 

 five miles being only about 300 feet (1,100 to 800 feet). It termi- 

 nates abruptly opposite the elevated headland of Ulu-i-ndali, a 



1 Strictly speaking Korolevu indicated in the profile would not be visible. 



B 2 



