Agassis — Islands and Coral Reefs of the Fiji Group. 115 



our vessel to enter, but near enough to give an excellent idea of 

 its characteristic structure. We next touched at Kambara, 

 anchored in the crater of Totoya, stopped at Moala : from there 

 we. made Solo Light House, examined the North Astrolabe 

 reef, steamed through the Great Astrolabe reef, coming out 

 west of Ono. We next examined a part of the shore of Kan- 

 davu and returned to Suva by way of Vatu Leile. On our 

 'second trip we visited .Ngau, Nairai, the Horseshoe reef, 

 Mbatiki and entering the Moturiki channel south of Ovalau, 

 examined the barrier reef between it and Suva as far as Mbau. 

 After our return to Suva we made a third trip along the 

 southern coast of YitiLevu as far as Naudronga; skirting the reef 

 as closely as was prudent, we were able to follow the changes 

 in the Great Barrier reef of Yiti Levu west of Suva as it 

 gradually passes into a fringing reef and disappears off the 

 Singatoka River, to appear again first as a fringing reef and 

 then as a barrier reef extending beyond the Nandi waters to 

 the west of Naudronga. We then paid a second visit to Yatu 

 Leile and returned to Suva, having steamed a little over 1300 

 miles. 



I came to Fiji under the impression that we were to visit a 

 characteristic area of subsidence ; for according to Dana and 

 Darwin there is no coral reef region in which it is a simpler 

 matter to follow the various steps of the subsidence which has 

 taken place here. Dana, in his last discussion of the coral reef 

 question, states that it is impossible to find a better series of 

 islands than those of the Fiji to illustrate the gradual changes 

 brought about by subsidence, which transform a volcanic island 

 with a fringing reef to one with a barrier, and next to one with 

 a circular reef ring and finally to one in which the interior 

 island has disappeared and has left only a more or less circular 

 reefing. For these reasons one of the Fiji atolls promised to 

 be an admirable location for boring and settling the question 

 of the thickness of the coral reef of an atoll. My surprise 

 was great, therefore, to find within a mile from Suva an ele- 

 vated reef about 50 feet thick and 120 feet above the level of 

 the sea, the base of the reef being underlaid by what is locally 

 called soapstone, probably a kind of stratified volcanic mud. 

 The western extension of this reef can be traced at several 

 points along the north shore of the harbor of Suva; the 

 island of Lambeka and Yua and Dra-ni-mbotu, which are from 

 sixty to ninety feet in elevation, being part of an elevated reef 

 extending to low-water mark. It was this elevated reef or its 

 extension westward which we traced from the Singatoka river 

 to the Nandi waters. A short distance inland from the mouth 

 of the Singatoka there is a bluff of about 250 feet in height, 

 composed of a coral-reef limestone which is the inner exten- 



