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 



1 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 Httle 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. 



