OBSERVATIONS OF A NATURALIST 

 IN THE PACIFIC 



CHAPTER I 



GENERAL INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON SOME OF THE LEADING 

 PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE ISLAND 



The remarkable shape of this island at once attracts the atten- 

 tion : and indeed it is in its irregular outline and in the occurrence 

 over a large portion of its surface of submarine tuffs and agglome- 

 rates that will be found a key to the study of its history. With an 

 extreme length of 98 miles, an average breadth of 15 to 20 miles, and 

 a maximum elevation of nearly 3,500 feet, it has an area, estimated 

 at 2,400 square miles, comparable with that of the county of Devon. 



Whilst its peculiarly long and narrow dimensions are to be 

 associated with the narrowing of the submarine basaltic platform, 

 from which it rises together with the other large island of Viti 

 Levu, its extremely irregular shape is closely connected with the 

 composite mode of its origin. We have here exemplified the 

 process of the building up of a continental island in the great area 

 of emergence of the Western Pacific, that region which displays at 

 various heights above the sea the ancient reefs and the underlying 

 deposits of the Solomon Islands, New Hebrides, Fiji, Tonga, &c. But 

 this process of construction has never been completed, and is at pre- 

 sent suspended ; yet it is in its incomplete condition that Vanua 

 Levu possesses its importance for the investigation of this subject. 



This island has in fact been formed by the union of a number 

 of smaller volcanic islands during a long protracted period of 

 emergence. These original islands are indicated approximately by 

 the 1,800-feet contour-level in the accompanying map. There is, 

 however, no reason for supposing that the movement of emergence 

 has altogether ceased. In the course of ages the extensive submarine 



B 



