Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/526

522 the oldest detailed accounts of the islands and their inhabitants is that given by Wilkes in the third volume of his narrative of the expediton.

Counting isolated rocks, the archipelago is composed of about 270 islands having a total area of 7,400 square miles, or nearly the same as that of Massachusetts. Two of the islands are far larger than the others, Vanua Levu (the great island) being about 100 miles long and 25

miles wide. and Viti Levu (Great Viti) being 80 miles long and 55 wide. Kandavu and Taviuni have not one twentieth the land area of the two larger islands, and all the others are much smaller, so small indeed that only about 80 islands of the group are large enough to be inhabited.

Geologically speaking, the Fijis are old and the volcanoes which gave rise to them have long ago subsided into their final rest. Yet even to-day there are reminders of more active times in an occasional earthquake, or the hot springs of Ngau or of Savu Savu valley and other places on Vanua Levu, or the pumice, which at times rises to the surface of the sea and is cast ashore at Kandavu. The islands were once much larger and higher than they are to-day, for tropical rains have washed the soft lavas into the surrounding sea, leaving here and there pinnacles of hard basalt towering upward in fantastic castellated forms and imparting a romantic beauty to the view which is surpassed only