SANTA-CEUZ.— NEW HEBEIDÉS. 



331 



discovered thirty-nine years afterwards by Dillon. The fatal rock lies to the 

 west of the island in one of the channels piercing the circuit of fringing reefs. 



Although now well known to mariners in the South Seas, and frequently 

 visited by labour vessels and missionaries, neither the Santa- Cruz group nor the 

 New Hebrides have jet been annexed by any European power. The former 

 come, no doubt, within the sphere assigned to British influence by the treaty 

 concluded with Grermany ; but the New Hebrides, which also seemed destined to 

 become an English possession, have been disputed by France, and some of the 

 islands have even been temporarily occupied by small French garrisons. Protes- 



Fig. 141. — Vanikoeo. 

 Scale 1 : 375.000. 



i66°4o 



I66°50 Lasb cF Gr-eenvvich 



Depths. 



Oto50 

 Fathoms. 



50 Fathoms 

 and upwards. 



^^ 6 Miles. 



tant and Catholic missionaries, inspired by religious rivalries, New Caledonian and 

 Fijian speculators in search of labourers for their plantations, clamoured for the 

 intervention of their respective governments in favour of their particular interests, 

 and for some years the political fate of the archipelago remained in suspense. 

 This uncertain situation has even been indefinitely prolonged by a recent treaty 

 which places the group under joint British and French protection, a state of things 

 which may probably, sooner or later, result in the partition of the archipelago 

 between the two rival powers. 



Like the other insular chains in the Western Pacific, both archipelagoes are of 



