[Illustration: Rough plan of the Ndrandramea district in Vanua Levu; made with prismatic compass and aneroid by H. B. Guppy.]
These hills have sometimes a rounded profile, when their summits are usually wooded. Others again terminate in conical bare rocky peaks, either pointed or truncated. They have often precipitous slopes and display vertical cliff-faces high up their sides. Their arrangement is rather singular. To the south and apart from the others lies Soloa Levu (1,600 feet). Navuningumu (1,930 feet) is similarly isolated on the north. On the east rises Ngaingai (2,430 feet), the highest of the peaks, with Wawa Levu (2,000 feet), Vatu Kerimasi (1,900 feet), Vatu Vanaya (1,600 feet), and Mbona Lailai (2,100 feet) closely clustered by its side. On the west there is another group of hills, of which Ndrandramea (1,800 feet) is the highest and best known. Associated with it are Kala-Kala (1,600 feet), Mako-mako, Thoka-singa (1,300 feet), Vatu Mata (1,050 feet), and another unnamed peak (1,400 feet) lying west of Ndrandramea.
The districts between and among the hills are much cut up into lesser hills and ridges, the result of the very extensive denudation to which this region has been subjected. The greater part of this area is drained by the Tambu-lotu tributary of the Wainunu; but in the northern part we cross the watershed between the Wainunu and Ndreketi basins, and to reach Navuningumu we cross the valley of one of the tributaries of the Ndreketi. To the east of the Ndrandramea region extends a broken country, elevated rather more than 1,000 feet above the sea, and from it there rise one or two hills with bare cliff-faces, which are probably composed of similar acid andesites.
Although for the most part composed of these acid andesites, each hill, as far as my observations show, has as a rule its own type of the rock, differing from the others in specific weight, in the texture of the groundmass, and in the relative proportion of the porphyritic constituents. The petrological characters will be found more fully discussed in Chapter XXI.; and only some of the more distinctive features will be noticed here in the following description of the district.
THE NGAINGAI GROUP OF HILLS.—Within a space less than a mile square rise Ngaingai, Wawa Levu, and the other three hills above named, so closely clustered together that the collective name of “Hen and Chickens” might be aptly applied to the group.