2 2 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



Kleinschmidt in 1876 visited a hot spring near the village of 

 Nambualu in the island of Ono which rose up in the midst of a 

 brook and had a temperature of about 100° Fahr.^ The same 

 naturalist in July of that year, when accompanied by Dr. Max 

 Biichner, came upon a hot spring issuing among the mangroves at 

 the coast about a mile from the village of Ndavingele in Kandavu. 

 He did not take the temperature ; but he says that Colonel Smythe 

 (about i860) observed the temperature to be i44°Fahr.2 Different 

 writers refer to extensive hot springs on the island of Ngau. They 

 are placed near the beach, and close to an ordinary cool spring. 

 Miss Gordon Cumming in At Home in Fiji gives an illustration 

 of them. Home mentions a hot spring on the island of Rambi. 

 Andrews describes two others that bubble up through the lime- 

 stone near the tidal zone in the southern part of Vanua Mbalavu. 

 Both these springs are in close proximity to the junction line be- 

 tween the intruded andesite and the old reef rock. One of them, 

 though not boiling, was hot enough to scald the skin.^ This list is 

 no doubt capable of being much extended, especially for Viti Levu 

 and the Lau Group. 



A description of the several systems of thermal springs of Vanua 

 Levu will now be given. 



I. The Hot Springs of the Lower Valley of the 

 Wainunu River. — This is one of the most extensive systems of the 

 kind in the island. The temperature of the various springs during 

 my sojourn in this district in 1898 ranged from 100° to 130° Fahr. 

 Those known to me are mostly situated in the lower part and at 

 the mouth of the Ndavutu Creek, one of the tributaries of the 

 Wainunu. They open usually on the river-bank, either close to 

 the water or a few feet above it, but some of them find an exit 

 under water at the bottom of the river. Natives allege that hot 

 springs occur at intervals on the left bank and at the river-bottom 

 along the whole length of the river below Ndavutu Creek. There 

 is certainly a hot spring on the right side of the river's mouth near 

 Mr, Dyer's house. It issues from the reef-flat and can only be 

 observed at exceptionally low tides. There is also a hot spring 

 which rises up at the edge of the stream at Thongea (Cogea) nearly 



^ Journal des Museum Godeffroy, heft 14, Hamburg, 1879. 



2 Dr. Max Biichner also refers to this spring in his Reise durch den Stillen 

 Ozean, 1878. 



^ Bulletin Museum Comparative Zoology, Harvard, vol. 38 ; Geolog. 

 Series V., No i, Nov. 1900. 



