310 SAMOAN ISLANDS. 
mountains. The harbour of Pango-pango, in which our ships lay at 
anchor, is a large bay several miles deep, on the south side of the 
island. It curves to the westward, and is confined by mountain 
ridges from eight to thirteen hundred feet in height, which form a 
high and steep but verdant wall around it. For a few hundred feet, 
about two-thirds of the way up the face of the ridge, a bare surface 
of dark semi-columnar rock is exposed to view. Above this, the front 
of the ridge again slopes a little, like the part below, and the rocks are 
soon buried in forest vegetation, which continues with few exceptions 
to the summit. 
Along the shores where the valleys come out upon the sea, there is 
usually a level plain, sometimes extending back for two miles. These 
plains are mostly occupied by groves of cocoanut and bread fruit, and 
the villages of the natives. 
The soil of this island is extremely fertile, the whole surface well 
wooded, and the lands abundantly watered with mountain streams. 
Rocks.—The basalt of the island about Pango-pango and on the 
ridges to the north, is remarkable for the very sparing dissemination 
of crystals of chrysolite and augite. In many varieties there is a total 
absence of either, and a strikingly uniform texture throughout. The 
rock is usually somewhat vesicular, but in some places it is without a 
cellule. A variety from Cockscomb Hill, a high crest of rock on the 
uorth side of the island, resembles in its appearance a very compact, 
erayish-brown quartz rock, though not silicious; it has no traces of 
crystallization, is exceedingly tough, and has a glistening lustre. 
Without a knowledge of its gradations into the other rocks of the 
island, a hand specimen would not at first be recognised as of igneous 
origin. Its colour is dirty bluish-brown. 
Small feldspathic crystals and minute grains of magnetic iron are 
occasionally found in the rock. I have collected, from large boulders 
around Pango-pango, fine specimens of porphyritic basalt, in which 
large compound tables of feldspar were thickly disseminated through 
a compact basaltic base. Some of the tables were a fourth of an inch 
thick, and an inch and a half broad. 
The prevailing colour of the basalt is grayish-blue, of different 
shades, passing into greenish-black and reddish-brown. 
I was informed by Mr. W. C. Cunningham, then English Vice- 
Consul at these islands, that a large current of lava occurs on the 
southwest portion of Tutuila. I have not seen any specimens of the 
