The phosphate deposits were discovered in 1900, and were de veloped by the Pacific Phosphate Co., until 1919 when the in terests of the company were bought by the British, Australian and New Zealand governments.
Ocean Island was annexed by Britain in 1901 and is the head quarters of the Gilbert and Ellice islands Colony. Nauru was annexed by Germany in 1888, but passed by mandate of the League of Nations to Britain after the World War. Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand agreed (1919) that Australia should appoint the first administrator for a term of five years. There is compulsory education for Europeans and natives to the age of 16, after that age technical training is given.
Ocean island and Nauru have important wireless stations.
The Ellice (Lagoon) islands, area 14 sq.m. Pop. (1933) 4,162, like the Gilbert islands, all coral atolls, nowhere raised more than a few feet above the sea-level, and where so raised densely clad with coco-nut palms, comprise a large number of low coralline islets clustered on some nine atolls, spread over a distance of about 400 m. in the direction from north-west to south-east.
The chief groups, all yielding coconuts, pandanus-fruit and taro, are Funafuti (Ellice island), Mukulailai, Murakita, Nukufetau, and Nanomana. Like the Gilbert islanders, the natives are Poly nesians exhibiting traces of Samoan origin. Nearly all the natives are nominally Christians. These islands together with the Gilbert islands were proclaimed Protectorates in 1892 and annexed within the Gilbert and Ellice islands Colony in 1915. This Colony is administered by the high commissioner through a resident com missioner whose headquarters are at Ocean island.
Rotuma, area, 14 sq.m. and population about 2,200, the princi pal of a cluster of small islands lying some 220 m. north-north west of the northernmost Fijian reef, is of volcanic formation, though activity has so long been extinct as not to be recorded even in tradition; there is much coral-growth about the main island—as indeed about the adjacent islands. The island was dis covered by Capt. Edwards of the "Pandora" in 1791. The island is high and rugged, clothed on the higher parts with luxuriant vegetation and on the coast with many coco-nut palms. There are
no visible streams, though the rainfall is considerable : the water apparently sinks through the loose soil and boulders which cover the whole island, and runs underground to the sea. The natives differ in language and in many other aspects from the Fijians. Always a vigorous and enterprising people, with a special reputa tion for peacefulness and hospitality to the occasional visitors who reached their shores, they have, since being taken at their own request under British protection (1881), become perhaps one of the most satisfactorily civilized peoples of their kind.
The natives are mostly either Wesleyans or Roman Catholics. A European commissioner resides, who, together with the native chiefs and two native magistrates, forms a regulation board which draws up the local laws subject to the approval of the legislative council of Fiji. The chief product is copra.
The Fijian Archipelago (see Map, Plate 5i) in many respects the most important in the Pacific, lies east-north-east and at a distance of about 73o miles from New Caledonia, between and S., and on and about the meridian of It consists of about 25o islands, of which some 8o are inhabited, with a total land area of about 7,050 sq.m. (thus roughly equalling that of Wales). The islands are ranged more or less in the form of a horse-shoe, open to the south, and more or less enclosing the Koro Sea. The largest island is Viti Levu, which with the long and narrow island of Kandavu, forms the western leg of the horse shoe; it is 95 m. in length (east to west) and 67 in extreme breadth, with an area of 4,053 sq.m. Forty miles north-east, at the central point of the horse-shoe, lies Vanua Levu, measuring 117 m. by 3o, with an area of 2,130 sq.m. Close off the south-east extremity of Vanua Levu is Taveuni, 26 m. in length by ro in breadth; and from the eastern side of Taveuni a chain of compara tively small islands, known as the Lau or Eastern Group, runs down nearly to S., thus forming the eastern leg of the horse shoe. Three other islands, all within the Koro Sea, must be men tioned: Ovalau, Koro and Ngau (Gau).