Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/111

Rh waves of foam in splendid majesty upon the coral reefs, or dashing in spray against its broken shore.

And in speaking of the Tahitian valleys, Ellis says:

There is the wildness of romance about the deep and lonely glens, around which the mountains rise like the steep sides of a natural amphitheater, till the clouds seem supported by them—this arrests the attention of the beholder, and for a time suspends his faculties in mute astonishment, and in the unbroken stillness that pervades the whole we might easily have induced the delusion that we were upon the enchanted ground of nature's fairy land.

Even simple sailor-like Wallis says of Tahiti:

The country has the most delightful and romantic appearance that can be imagined: towards the sea it is level, and is covered with fruit trees of various kinds, particularly the cocoanut. Among these are the houses of the inhabitants, consisting only of a roof, and at a distance having greatly the appearance of a long barn. The country within, at about the distance of three miles, rises into lofty hills, that are crowned with wood, and terminate in peaks from which large rivers are precipitated into the sea. We saw no shoals but found the island skirted by a reef of (coral) rocks through which there are several openings into deep water.

Tahiti is situated in South Latitude 17° 40' and West Longitude 149° 25'. In other words, upon the opposite side of the world from the middle of Africa, and nearly at the center of the Pacific Ocean. In outline, it is figure-8 shaped, being a twin island, consisting of two oval land masses joined by the low, narrow isthmus of Taravao. The major axis of the island extends from northwest to southeast, and is only about 37 miles long. The larger land mass, called Great Tahiti, or Tahiti-uni, has about four times the area of Little Tahiti (Tahiti-iti) which lies to the southeastward. The total length of the coast line is not more than 120 miles, and the area of the whole island is only about one third that of the State of Rhode Island.

The peculiar figure-8 shape of the island is probably due to the activity of two originally separate volcanic cones each one of which rose above the sea until their sides touched. But, if this be true, it occurred long ago measured in terms of the life-time of volcanoes for there are now neither hot springs nor other evidences of internal heat upon the island.

Indeed much of nature's sculpturing of valley-wall and peak is due to the great variety of plutonic and volcanic rocks and nepheline syenite upon Tahiti, the differing degrees of hardness of which permitted erosion to carve deeply in some places, while at the same time leaving others to stand in bold relief.

Also the grandeur of Tahitian scenery is due to the fact that its volcanoes were of an explosive type and tore deep fissures into the earth's crust, permitting molten basalt to well upward and cement the rents. Then, when the volcanic fires died down, the rains consummated their