CHAPTER VL. 
VITIVOR FEBJEE ISLANDS 
1. GENERAL FEATURES. 
TuE Feejee Islands occupy an area of forty thousand square miles, 
on either side of the meridian of 180°, and between the latitudes 16° 
and 20° S. The surface of land is not far from seven thousand square 
miles. The group might be very appropriately termed an archipelago. 
Rarely in any part of the globe are such numbers of islands clustered 
together, and no region can exceed it in dangerous navigation. In this 
thickly dotted area, ten or a dozen islands might at any time be 
counted from the ship’s deck, and often a much larger number was 
in sight. ‘They are of all forms and dimensions, from rugged basaltic 
mountains one to five thousand feet in height, to the coral islet whose 
sandy surface barely emerges from the ocean’s waves; and among 
and around them, coral reefs are innumerable. Nearly every island 
has its shores extended by wide coral platforms, and very many are 
inclosed by irregular barrier reefs, often stretching out for miles in 
long projecting points. Moreover, the many isolated reefs that low 
tide brings in view, and others a fathom or two below the surface, 
multiply greatly the dangers of navigation. A clear sky and a good 
look-out are required to enable the navigator to thread his way safely 
through many portions of this coral labyrinth. 
There are about one hundred and fifty islands in the archipe- 
lago; or, if we include the isolated rocks which stand as out- 
works around the larger bodies of land, and every humble coral islet 
overgrown with a thicket of mangrove bushes, the number would be 
nearly doubled. Viti Lebu and Vanua Lebu, the two largest of the 
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