20 A MISSION TO VITI. 
add to the beauty of the scenery. The northern shores 
especially, forming in conjunction with the opposite 
island of Vanua Levu the Straits of Somosomo, teem 
with vegetation, and present a picture of extreme 
fertility. The trees and bushes are very thick, and 
everywhere overgrown by white, blue, and pink con- 
volvulus and other creepers, often entwined in graceful 
festoons. Here and there the eye descries cleared 
patches of cultivation, or low brushwood, overtopped 
by the feathery crowns of magnificent tree-ferns ; vil- 
lages nestling among them. The air is laden with mois- 
ture, and there is scarcely a day without a shower of 
‘rain. The north-western side of the island being more- 
over, from its geographical position, deprived of the 
direct action of the trade wind, the temperature feels 
warm when in other parts of the group it is compara- 
tively cool. In consequence of this, few whites have 
taken up their residence in Taviuni, and the mission- 
aries were about removing to Waikava, on Vanua Levu, 
nearly opposite Wairiki, where their houses would have 
the benefit of the trade wind and the sea breezes. Not 
mere fancy made them leave Wairiki. Their health 
was giving way, and their poor children suffered severely 
from a disease of the eyes. Besides, Taviuni is now 
thinly inhabited in comparison to formerly. The towns 
of Vuna, Somosomo, Weilangi, Wainikeli, and Bouma 
have only a small population. From Wilkes’s descrip- 
tion, for instance, I expected to find Somosomo, in 1840, 
the capital of the island as well as the kingdom of 
Cakaudrove, a large place, instead of a mere collection 
of ten houses, with neither heathen temple, Christian 
