Excerpt from Observations of a Naturalist in the Pacific Between, Vol. 1: 1896 and 1899
During a sojourn in the Pacific, which covered a period of rather over a year in Hawaii (1896-97), and of two years and three months in Fiji (1897-99), attention was mainly confined to the study of plant-distribution and to the examination of the geological structure of Vanua Levu.
With Hillebrand's "Flora of Hawaii" always in my hands I roamed over the large island of Hawaii, ascending the three principal mountains of Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, and Hualalai, and in the case of my second ascent of Mauna Loa spending twenty-three days alone on its summit Similarly in Fiji, Seemann's "Flora Vitiensis" was my counsellor and guide in the matter of plants.
In Hawaii I was in a land of active sub-aerial volcanoes, and I paid my devotions at all the altars of Pele, their presiding deity. In Fiji I trod upon the surface of submarine volcanoes that emerged ages since from the ocean and still retain their coverings of sea-deposits. Both in Hawaii and Fiji I lived much among the people; and though my chief interest lay in the comparison of these two types of volcanic islands, I could not but be drawn to the kindly natives whose hospitality I so long enjoyed.
Destiny led me to Vanua Levu in the following fashion. With the relief party to take me down from Mauna Loa there arrived a well-known German naturalist who, like myself, had been interested in coral-reef investigations. We discussed this warm topic at an elevation of nearly 14,000 feet above the sea, with the thermometer at 20° F.
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