XIV WAIKATAKATA 



203. 



same formations occur. I ascended the stream-course there for 

 about a mile, basic tuffs and agglomerates being exposed in its 

 sides, whilst blocks of a heavy dark olivine-basalt ^ lay in the bed. 

 The hot springs which issue inland at the side of this stream are 

 described on page 35. 



The Basin of the Ndreke-ni-wai River. — With the 

 region, which is bounded on the north by the Mount Freeland 

 Range or the Ngala mountains and on the south by the Waikawa 

 Range, I have but slight acquaintance, except in the case of the 

 coast fronting Natewa Bay. A little way up the course of the 

 river Ndreke-ni-wai, which drains this area, lies the town of Koro- 

 ni-yasatha, where Mr. Home, the botanist, spent some days in 

 1878. Probably much of this area is not over 200 feet above the 

 sea, and apparently there is a good deal of talasinga country. 



The Coast between the Mouth of the Ndreke-ni- 

 wai River and the Foot of the Ngala or Mount 

 Freeland Range. — Between this estuary and Valavala, two 

 miles to the eastward, occurs a bedded calcareous palagonitic tuff 

 of sedimentary origin, dipping steeply to the north. In one 

 locality there is a rudely columnar dyke of a porphyritic augite- 

 andesite. Coarse basic tuffs exposed in the cliffs and shore-flat 

 of Ko-nandi-nandi Point on the side of Valavala Bay display a 

 spheroidal structure, due probably to the vicinity of some igneous 

 intrusion. The sea-border extending from this bay to Natewa, 

 and farther on to Waikatakata, near the foot of the Ngala moun- 

 tains, is in most parts a broad low strip of coast- land, where rock- 

 exposures are infrequent. A dark grey andesite forms the blocks 

 of the agglomerate in this locality. It is noticeable on account of 

 the prismatic pyroxene of the groundmass ; and it is assigned to 

 genus 5 of the second (prismatic) sub-order of the hypersthene- 

 augite andesites. A blackish semi-vitreous pyroxene-andesite 

 occurs in the vicinity of Natewa. 



At Waikatakata (the Fijian word for " hot water "), where an 

 outlying spur of the Mount Freeland or Ngala Range reaches the 

 coast, hot springs issue on the hill-side, as described on page 34, 

 On the slopes around the springs lie huge masses of an aphanitic 



^ It displays an abundance of small phenocrysts of plagioclase, augite, and 

 olivine partly serpentinised, in a groundmass composed in the main of coarse 

 augite grains (-025 mm. in size) and of felspar microliths ("07 mm. in length) 

 in smaller proportion, with little if any residual glass. Specific gravity 2-98. 

 It is near the Waikawa basalt, referred to on p. 202, and is placed in the same 

 genus (13) of the olivine class. 



